An Innocent Man
by Fang's Fawn
Summary: "And what about John Watson?" Sherlock had asked. He had expected a rather dull answer...after all, he had been away. He had not expected to hear that John had spent the past two years in prison. Series 3 AU. No slash.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

When Mycroft Holmes came first in his exams, earning himself a place as the youngest-ever entrant in one of the country's most elite and prestigious secondary schools, his proud mother told him to name whatever he liked as a treat. She would never have made such a rash offer to her younger son (who, at three, was already demanding cadavers on which to experiment), but she expected Mycroft would request a new piano, or perhaps the expensive set of British political anthologies he had had his eye on for some time.

She was flabbergasted when her sensible, languid son instead asked for a puppy.

Mrs. Holmes could be forgiven for her lack of foresight. While the wish for a puppy might seem synonymous with boyhood, Mycroft was certainly _not_ an ordinary boy. Along with his prodigious intelligence, he was endowed with a frightening emotional precocity. He had no friends; other children (including his own brother) bored him. He was careful with his diction, had a massive vocabulary, despised slang and spoke like a seasoned solicitor, making it easy to forget he was only a child. He liked to dress well and abhorred getting dirty – at ten, he resembled nothing so much as a small accountant. He preferred reading to sports and, indeed, shunned physical activity as much as possible. He was a child who habitually moaned about being forced to accompany his parents and small brother on short Sunday strolls; he hardly seemed the type of boy to demand a rough-and-tumble puppy to play with.

In truth, Mycroft was not interested in the antics of a clumsy puppy. He had recently, however, become _very_ interested in the history of the Kennel Club and of dog showing. Already aspiring, at age ten, one day to move in circles of power among the elite, an intelligent interest in purebred dogs promised to be a dignified, correct and worthy hobby, and one not requiring a disinterested owner to engage overmuch in "legwork" (there were trainers and handlers for that sort of thing).

Mrs. Holmes protested. She had enough to do, she declared, between trying to keep up with her hyperactive younger son, Sherlock, as well as seeing to the education of both very gifted boys. To Mycroft's argument that he would take on the whole of the responsibility for the hypothetical animal, Mummy had expressed considerable doubt, observing that a boy who abhorred sports and active play of any kind was hardly likely to offer the kind of active lifestyle and vigorous exercise a sporting breed craves. But while she might have prevailed against her young son's rapidly progressing skills in debate with an inarguable "because-I-said-so," she could _not_ prevail against her easygoing husband's amicable remark that a deal was a deal: she had promised the lad whatever reward he chose, and wouldn't it be nice to have a family dog 'round the home, anyway?

Mrs. Holmes conceded defeat and, shortly after Mycroft's summer holidays began, they brought home Tam O'Shanter of Knightscroft, a six-week-old male Irish Setter with an impeccable bloodline and a pedigree as long as young Mycroft's arm. When Mycroft expressed an admiration for the elegant, lanky beauty and deep, rich color of Irish Setters, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes had consulted the advice of a well-known breeder who helped Mycroft choose a puppy that showed promise not only of great physical beauty, strength, and size, but a tractable, genial nature and signs of intelligence. Even at this early age, Tam O'Shanter proved to be brave, friendly, gracious, and unusually dignified for a setter pup, displaying an affable yet somewhat detached approach to people that was not unlike Mycroft's own. It was as though the puppy was aware of his prodigious pedigree, and while friendly, was not overly emotional as many puppies are, carrying himself in a right royal fashion that suited the cool, polite and aloof Mycroft to a tee. The pup seemed a perfect fit for its new young owner.

Unfortunately, the one thing Mycroft failed to take into account was the fact that, while anyone can be a dog's owner, a dog chooses his own master. From the moment they brought him home, Tam O'Shanter's choice was as immediate as it was clear and, ultimately, irrevocable: he was Sherlock's dog.

To Mycroft's infinite disgust, Tam O'Shanter, while perfectly friendly with him and his parents, attached himself to the three-year-old boy with the sort of fierce devotion and utter adoration that inspires the legendary dog stories favored by any child that has ever coveted a canine of his or her own. The puppy could not bear to have Sherlock out of his sight; he would sit by the hour, eager and alert, looking up into the little boy's face as he played with his chemistry set or practiced his violin, watching it with never fading attention, studying it, following with the keenest interest each fleeting expression, every movement or shift in feature, his heart shining out of his soft brown eyes in utter adoration. He would follow Sherlock wherever the boy went, from the moment he woke to the moment he was put to bed, and did all he could to remain with Sherlock while the child slept.

Sherlock, for his part, was delighted with this attention. Neither he nor Mycroft had had the pleasure of childhood friendships; their keen intellects set them apart from other children, making them objects of suspicion, jealousy and disdain. Mycroft coped by turning to his books and looking down on lesser intellects with haughtiness, considering himself above them. Sherlock tried to follow his big brother's example, but had rather a harder time of it…while Mycroft was content with his own company and possessed of the ability to blend in (or at least not stand out too much), Sherlock secretly desired friends, but his restless energy and outspoken behavior made him even more off-putting than Mycroft.

The puppy gave Sherlock the companionship the boy craved on his terms: Sherlock wanted to be adored and admired, the puppy adored and admired him; Sherlock wanted faithfulness and devotion, the puppy was loyal and trusting to the point of stupidity, following Sherlock into all manner of ridiculous adventures and ignoring its own instincts towards self-preservation; Sherlock wanted someone to listen to his long-winded, rapid-fire "observations," the puppy never grew tired of listening to Sherlock, sitting enthralled long after the rest of the family's patience was outstripped by Sherlock's prattling, its ears pricked, head tilted to the side, worshipful brown eyes alight with the eagerness to understand.

Though Mycroft was disappointed and hurt by this turn of events, he did what he usually did in such situations – affected an attitude of superiority, pretending (and sometimes almost believing) that it all mattered very little to him, that he was above such things. When Sherlock, newly enamored with tales of pirates sailing the high seas, renamed the puppy "Redbeard," Mycroft had hidden his bitter anger behind a show of scorn for his younger brother's childishness.

Shortly before Mycroft left for school, Mummy had come into his room one night after he had gone to bed to talk to him. Sherlock had already been in bed for two hours (a small miracle the household had not yet stopped marveling at – getting Sherlock into bed and keeping him there had been an hours-long operation before Mummy had finally given in to her boy's pleas and demands that Redbeard be allowed to sleep with him). Sherlock still didn't go straight to sleep – the family could hear him whispering to the puppy when they passed the bedroom door for as much as an hour after the light was put out – but he was definitely sleeping longer and more consistently, with fewer nightmares and restless episodes. And the improved rest was showing in Sherlock's behavior and ability to concentrate during the day; his attention span was better, he could sit still for longer periods, and he was less apt to melt down when he didn't get his way.

It was this that Mummy wanted to talk to Mycroft about while she sat on his bed, telling him how sorry she was that his hopes for a puppy of his own hadn't worked out as they had planned, but how she hoped Mycroft could be pleased along with his parents about how much happier, calmer and more focused Sherlock was now that Redbeard had come into their lives.

Mycroft, who was rather fond of his little brother, agreed, and assured his mother that, in truth, he was really too old for puppies, nor would he have time for such things from now on, and it was best for all concerned that Tam O'Shanter – that is, Redbeard – be Sherlock's dog.

Deep down, though, he could not help feeling jealous of the affection and camaraderie Sherlock shared with this puppy, and wondering what it would be like to have something or someone as loyal to him, just for being himself, as Redbeard was to Sherlock.

* * *

When Mycroft Holmes came first in his secondary school exams, earning himself a place as the youngest-ever entrant in one of the country's most elite and prestigious universities, his proud mother felt another treat was in order. This one she chose herself, however: a six-week holiday traveling in America for the whole family.

Ten-year-old Sherlock had been delighted at first, regarding the whole thing as a glorious adventure, until he heard his father on the telephone making arrangements for their travel.

"But what about Redbeard?" Sherlock demanded imperiously.

Mycroft, who had been in the room at the time, looked down at the pair. The dog in question, firmly attached to Sherlock's side as always with Sherlock's hand carelessly resting on the back of his neck, looked up and waved his plumy tale at the sound of his own name on his young master's lips. As predicted by the breeder who had helped in his selection, he had grown into a stunningly handsome specimen of the breed with a deep chest, slender waist, and an abundant, fiery coat that gleamed like burnished copper in the sunshine. He could easily have been a champion if Sherlock had not insisted that dog shows would bore the animal – and him. Not that a layman would know it to see him as he was now, Mycroft thought critically. As their mother had predicted, Redbeard's primary care – bathing, grooming and feeding – had fallen to her, for Sherlock, as much as he loved his pet, could not be bothered to attend to his long-haired coat (he barely remembered to feed the animal, though Mycroft supposed this was to be expected, seeing as how he often forgot to come in for lunch himself when he was out exploring the woods, and often seemed to resent the time meals took up when he could be doing something more interesting). Mrs. Holmes had a difficult time keeping up with her young son and his pet, and like his young master, Redbeard often bore a distinctly tattered appearance, the feathers along his legs, tail and stomach as tangled as Sherlock's own curls, his collar a battered reflection of Sherlock's own thrown-together play clothes.

"Obviously the _dog_ can't come with us to America, Sherlock," Mycroft sniffed, using his best shut-up-and-let-the-smart-people-talk tone that he had cultivated especially for his baby brother (it never failed to cause Sherlock to glower darkly at him from beneath furrowed brows). "Traveling abroad with an animal requires all sorts of tedious, complicated procedures, not to mention the fact that it's quite costly, and many hotels won't even welcome dogs."

"Then I'm not going, either!" Sherlock declared angrily, crossing his arms and lowering his brows. The beast at his side whined a bit, sensing his distress.

"Now, Sherlock, be reasonable," Mr. Holmes said coaxingly. "We've chosen a lovely kennel for Redbeard where they'll take care of him beautifully. He'll be safe as houses, and looking out for you when we get back."

And in the end, that was how it had turned out. The Holmes' had kenneled Redbeard and set off on their adventures. They had a lovely time in America, and Sherlock, Mycroft noted, seemed almost to forget about his doting and doted upon pet entirely once they were on the plane. Indeed, as much as he missed the dog, Sherlock seemed also to relish the freedom from its rather overprotective presence. Sherlock could hardly remember a time when Redbeard wasn't at his side and had grown to fiercely love and depend upon the animal, but while it was true that the setter's guardianship had rescued Sherlock from many a scrape (Mummy declared more than once that she never had to worry about Sherlock when he was out on his own so long as Redbeard was with him; the dog had diverted the attention of an angry bull that had taken umbrage when Sherlock had unwittingly invaded his field, tackled an oversized bully who had taken exception to Sherlock's observations that he was shoplifting in front of his mother, and even once pulled Sherlock out of a stream when the boy had missed his footing while trying to retrieve a specimen for his collection of marine life), and his tireless listening had helped Sherlock work through many a challenging homework problem, his presence could also be, Sherlock now discovered, a bit…restrictive. Redbeard had more than once stopped Sherlock from doing something the dog deemed too risky or dangerous by blocking his path or holding the boy back by his coat or trouser leg with his teeth. He had also inadvertently given Sherlock away on more than one covert "spy mission" with an ill-timed bark, scratch or sneeze. Sherlock seemed to enjoy not being babied by a dog for a change.

It was, Mycroft supposed dispassionately, a sign of Sherlock's inherently selfish nature. There was greatness in his little brother, and brilliance, but these qualities were not tempered by coolness and discipline as they were in Mycroft himself. Mycroft was careful in all he did; Sherlock was rarely careful at all. Part of the reason he did not have friends was due to the fact that he was as fierce and almost hurtful with his love as he was with this pride and sense of discovery…one needed only to look to Redbeard to see that. There wasn't much Sherlock wouldn't do for Redbeard, but there also wasn't much he wouldn't do _to_ Redbeard in the name of science and curiosity. Sherlock would ride his bicycle for miles on self-appointed expeditions while Redbeard ran determinedly behind him, wearing his paws down until the pads were raw and bloody in his desperation to keep up with his master. Sherlock would become absorbed in composing a composition and forget to feed his pet. He even experimented on him, once knocking the dog out for a day and a half with a sedative he had concocted himself.

The great red setter seemed to have an unlimited source of patience where Sherlock was concerned, almost bursting itself in order to keep up with his young charge… Mycroft even once found the dog frantically attempting to scramble up a tree Sherlock had climbed when he was five. His little brother was sitting on a high branch, impatiently ordering his pet to follow him, and Redbeard probably would have hurt himself trying had Mycroft not put a stop to the exercise and explained to his brother that dogs simply don't climb trees. At which point Sherlock descended, vociferously berating Redbeard for being "idiotic" and "useless" all the way down.

Redbeard simply panted and waved his plumy tail happily because his idol was back on the ground.

For all that he had appeared to have forgotten about his constant companion while they were in America, Sherlock became more and more excited and eager at the prospect of being reunited with him during the family's return journey. He shot out of the car before it had even come to a full stop when they reached the kennel, ignoring his mother's squawk of protest, and bolted toward the row of kennels where Redbeard was housed, eagerly calling his pet's name. He was met with a wailing howl that sent shivers up Mycroft's spine, and a moment later there was a cry of distress from Sherlock that had him and his parents quickening their steps to a run. When they reached Redbeard's enclosure, the Holmes parents and Mycroft skidded to a halt, staring at a tearful Sherlock on his knees in front of the cage, reaching through to a dog they barely recognized. The once glorious, shining coat was dull and sparse; the mighty muscles were wasted and the animal's ribs were showing. Worst of all were the terrible, pitiful cries of almost hysterical ecstasy such as they had never heard the beast make is it flung itself at the door of its pen and tried desperately to reach Sherlock's face and hands with its tongue.

The owner of the kennel could not stop apologizing as he fumbled for the key to Redbeard's prison, explaining how they hadn't known how to reach the Holmes family while they were abroad, and weren't sure they should even if they could, seeing as how they were overseas.

"We did our best for the tyke," the kennel owner explained worriedly, "but he were pining for t'young man."

Redbeard recovered, but it was clear that, had he been parted from Sherlock for much longer, they probably would have come home to the news that the dog was dead. Mycroft did not put much stock in intense attachments, but even he was not unmoved by the sounds the dog made when it was released from the kennel and bowled Sherlock over, wiggling desperately as though it couldn't get close enough, uttering desperate whimpers that sounded frighteningly akin to human sobs as it nuzzled the boy's chin.

For the next four months, Redbeard could not bear to be parted from Sherlock at all, even following his young master into the bath. Sherlock seemed but a little less traumatized than his pet, often electing to stay at home if his mother and father were going for errands on which Redbeard could not accompany them for one reason or another.

Mummy worried out loud more than once (never in front of Sherlock) about what would happen to the dog when her younger son went off to school, but as it happened, they never found out…the winter before that separation was to take place Sherlock, lying on the floor in front of the fire reading a book, his head pillowed on Redbeard's satiny flank, idly reached up to twine his fingers in the long, red fur over the dog's shoulder as he so often did – only this time, his hand encountered a large lump that extended down over the animal's ribs.

The veterinarian tried her best, but she was not optimistic, and after a rapid decline over several months, Redbeard finally had to be euthanized.

To say Sherlock was devastated did not even begin to describe his grief. Their parents at one point took him to a doctor, who prescribed pills to help him deal with his despondency. Sherlock took the pills, which dulled his keen reactions and flying thoughts, for several weeks, then threw them away and refused to speak of Redbeard ever again. Instead, he took to heart Mycroft's adage that "caring is not an advantage," and became more solitary and aloof than he had ever been. The warmth and humanity that Redbeard had brought out in him dwindled, leaving behind a bitterly sardonic youth whose cutting tongue drove away potential companions. But Sherlock did not seem to care. Indeed, he seemed rather pleased.

Mummy had hoped Sherlock would get over it in time, but they all had to admit that Sherlock was never the same after Redbeard had gone. A wall had come up. Mycroft sometimes thought, privately, that perhaps it was just as well that Sherlock seemed unable to form meaningful attachments, if the loss of a mere dog could affect him so profoundly. Outwardly, it appeared as though Sherlock had "deleted" the dog from his memory...but Mycroft had his doubts.


	2. June 2011

**June 2011**

Though the breeze ruffling his newly dyed and straightened ginger hair was quite mild, Sherlock put his coat collar up and turned so he was facing away from it. Looking at his younger brother, Mycroft guessed the involuntary shiver had less to do with (as John once so eloquently put it) a desire to "look cool" and more with simple fatigue. Sherlock's angular features were bone-white but for the purplish half-moons under his eyes. His skin, hastily scrubbed to remove all traces of the fake blood, almost seemed translucent.

Mycroft suspected he didn't look much better. The wind tugged at the ends of his own usually slicked-back hair, and his eyes felt gritty. The last eighteen hours had been an efficient but manic flurry of activity, spiriting Sherlock away from St. Bartholomew's Hospital and ensuring that Operation Lazarus was successfully implemented after Moriarty's unexpected suicide.

"You'll start your work dismantling Moriarty's network in Florence," Mycroft said, handing Sherlock a file. "The strands of his web are far-reaching…even now we are not entirely certain where all his bases of operation can be found, but the Italian contingent ought to offer more detailed information."

Sherlock took the file with a dismissive shrug. "I don't expect to be more than six months about it at most…probably less, as Moriarty was more confident than he was clever."

Mycroft frowned at this, but allowed it to pass. "You are, at this time, a Norwegian graduate student by the name of 'Sigerson.' My assistant will arrive momentarily with your identification and a new phone. I expect you to use it, Sherlock," Mycroft added severely as Sherlock rolled his eyes. "You are not to go months without making contact…if I don't hear from you at least once every fortnight I will assume you have met trouble and send someone to extract you."

Mycroft smiled thinly. "I do worry about you, you know. Constantly."

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said impatiently, tucking the folder under his arm. "You agree to keep an eye on John, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade and Molly, and I'll remain faithful to our biweekly check-ins, Mycroft. Are you in a position to share their current…status?"

"Mrs. Hudson, upon receiving the news of your supposed death, is at this time staying with Mrs. Turner next door," Mycroft said, deliberately not going into detail regarding the profoundness of the elderly landlady's grief. "I'm keeping a surveillance on the building. When your funeral service is over, I will explain to Mrs. Hudson that your things are to be left undisturbed until such time as I am able to go through them myself, and will cover the cost of the rent. I doubt she will raise an objection."

Sherlock made a "hmph" of acknowledgement and looked away, mumbling, "At least John won't be compelled to move out." He was clearly not feeling easy in his mind about Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft thought dispassionately.

"I'm afraid Detective Inspector Lestrade is not very popular with the Chief Superintendent at the moment," Mycroft continued smoothly. "He is facing an inquiry and a possible suspension. He is also being threatened with demotion, though I will, of course, step into prevent any real damage to his career."

Sherlock, who had started to protest at the mention of the demotion, subsided at this assurance, looking sullen.

"Ms. Hooper will be attending to your 'autopsy' later today," Mycroft went on. "It seems you were correct, and I have underestimated her…she has behaved admirably thus far. That said, I will offer her an opportunity to go on holiday."

Mycroft paused, then added, "I'm not sure what toll the deception may take on her conscience, Sherlock."

Sherlock paid no attention to this. "And what about John?" he asked, making a great show of pulling his gloves on to give the impression that the answer didn't concern him overmuch.

Mycroft smiled slightly. He knew better.

"Well, what about him?"

"Have you seen him?" Sherlock asked impatiently.

"When would I have had time in the past twenty-four hours, Sherlock?" Mycroft demanded acidly. "I'm keeping a weather eye on him, of course. He's safe, if that's what you're asking. He was taken into custody upon giving his statement–"

"_What?!"_

"–treated for a mild concussion – it appears your undercover cyclist was a bit too…_enthusiastic_ in his appointed task–" Mycroft continued, unperturbed.

Sherlock winced. He had not wanted John to be hurt, but he supposed that a bump on the head was better than a bullet to the brain.

"–after which he was formally charged with assaulting an officer – ah, forgotten your faithful bodyguard's little altercation with the Chief Superintendent at Baker Street, have we?" Mycroft smiled snidely when Sherlock started. "The good Dr. Watson _does_ sometimes remind me of that devoted childhood pet of yours, always ready to attack the 'bullies' for you, isn't he?"

Mycroft noted smugly that Sherlock's jaw had tightened ever so slightly.

"Now, where was I? Ah, yes…after being charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest, he was then transferred to a holding cell where he is still, I trust, cooling his heels."

"You _left_ him there overnight, Mycroft?" Sherlock hissed furiously.

"You'll excuse me the oversight, Sherlock," Mycroft snapped back. "I _was_ rather preoccupied with helping my little brother fake his death, arranging his departure from the country under an assumed name, and assuring our parents as to his safety. Forgive me if bailing out your _blogger_ wasn't high on my list of immediate priorities."

The two men glared at one another, absolutely still but for their hair and coats which were continuously buffeted by the rising wind. Mycroft took a breath and looked away first, knowing that Sherlock was not going to like what he had to say next.

"To be perfectly frank…it really was, I decided, the safest place for him," Mycroft said reluctantly.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed still more. "What do you mean?" he asked dangerously.

Mycroft paused. Then, reluctantly, "One of Moriarty's assassin's slipped our net."

Sherlock stilled. "Which one?" He turned away so that Mycroft had a view of his profile as he steeled himself to hear the answer.

Mycroft's lips thinned. "The one that was targeting John."

Sherlock spun back around. "_Bloody hell_, Mycroft!"

"So you see," Mycroft continued smoothly, "a holding cell in New Scotland Yard, while not the most comfortable or dignified of accommodations I'm sure, truly _did_ seem the best option for the good doctor who can, on occasion, be a bit…_unpredictable, _shall we say…while we were resetting the board."

Sherlock turned away, visibly trying to get himself under control. He swore softly under his breath. Mycroft knew what he was thinking, because he was thinking the same thing…that this particular faceless assassin, whom they had long suspected of being Moriarty's chief lieutenant, was both clever and dangerous. And if he was clever enough to slip past Mycroft's agents, then he might be clever enough to suspect that Sherlock's "suicide" might just be a ruse.

Sherlock did not ask regarding the feasibility of that last as he already knew the answer. Instead, after a moment of silence, he said softly, "I could have brought him with me."

It was so quiet Mycroft almost missed it under the wind and the turbines of the jet's engines. "_What_?"

Sherlock turned to face him again. "We could have faked John's death, too."

Mycroft gave in incredulous laugh. "And you think he would have dropped everything in his life – his position at the clinic, his other friends, his sister – to follow you on this mad errand?" he scoffed.

"Yes," Sherlock said simply.

He said it without the slightest hint of hesitation, and as Mycroft stared into his brother's grey eyes and saw nothing but calm certainty there, he found himself wondering (as he had so often wondered while observing his brother in his boyhood with a ridiculously devoted Irish Setter by his side) what it would be like to have someone as loyal to him, just for being himself. There was no one in his life whom he trusted as implicitly as Sherlock appeared to trust John Watson, and of those Mycroft trusted the most, he knew their chief loyalty was, like his own, to the nation and not to him.

Which was as it should be, of course. He felt a sudden twinge of something he refused to name as "loneliness" and pushed it aside ruthlessly.

"I have my doubts as to the usefulness of a _personal assistant_ on a venture such as you are about to embark upon, Sherlock," Mycroft said coolly. "John Watson is a good man, and a worthy comrade to have by your side in most situations. But he is simple, straightforward, and nowhere near as clever as you. He is also quintessentially English and useless at subterfuge. In this situation, being alone will protect you."

He paused, wondering for a moment why Sherlock had flinched at those words. But when the younger man only kept his eyes on the tarmac before them and said nothing, he continued.

"As to the notion that he might be let in on what we were planning, well…the less John knows, Sherlock, the less likely he is to compromise your cover, or to become a target himself. And if _he_, your own right hand, believes you to be dead, then, hopefully, those whom you are pursuing will believe it, too."

Sherlock swallowed painfully. Mycroft and he had discussed all this before, and it had made perfect sense. He did not understand why the memory of John's broken voice pleading, "Let me though, please…he's my friend…he's my friend" should make him question the rightness of his actions now.

Before either brother could say another word, the woman John Watson knew as Anthea approached, a briefcase in one hand and a zippered file in the other.

"Your documents, sir," she said, handing the briefcase to Sherlock.

Sherlock took them. He looked up at Mycroft.

Mycroft held out his hand. "You may trust me to see that your friends are kept safe, Sherlock. I trust that you will do all you can to keep yourself safe."

And with that promise, Sherlock nodded once and shook his brother's hand. Then, without another word, he turned and strode toward the plane.

As the aircraft began to taxi down the runway, Mycroft's assistant handed him the zippered file.

"Here is an update on the safety precautions being put into place on Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, Martha Hudson and Molly Hooper, as well as your parents, sir."

"And Dr. Watson? Has he been released yet?"

The cool brunette indicated a sheaf of papers in the file. Mycroft pulled them to the top and glanced over them. He paused suddenly and, thunderstruck, began going over them again more slowly.

The top one was an arrest report. John Watson was not only being charged with assaulting the New Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent, he was also being charged on suspicion of accessory to kidnapping in collusion with one Sherlock Holmes. Due to the seriousness of the latter crime, the evidence gathered, his attack on the Chief Superintendent and his proven status as a flight risk, he had been denied bail.

Tightening his grip on his umbrella, Mycroft turned back to his assistant. "Explain."

His voice was cold and flat, but she knew him well enough to not be cowed.

"It seems that the NSY forensics team upon reviewing the material gathered at the factory where the Bruhl children were found discovered evidence linking Dr. Watson to the scene prior to his arrival with your brother and the police. A search of 221b Baker Street also turned up a supply of mercury in Dr. Watson's bedroom."

Mycroft stared at her. Behind him, he heard the jet's engines rev and turned just in time to watch it lift from the ground. He wondered as he watched if Sherlock was looking out of the window at him. Moments later, the plane vanished from view.

Mycroft stared down at the arrest report again.

"So…Moriarty planted evidence that would implicate John as Sherlock's partner in crime." He frowned. But why? While John had remained a target so long as he was at Sherlock's side, neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had ever believed that Moriarty had for one moment regarded John as more than dogs body, unthreatening and unimportant except as a way to get to Sherlock.

_Oh._

Unwillingly, Mycroft started to smile. "Clever boy," he whispered. "Clever, naughty boy."

"Sir?"

Mycroft started, then looked at his assistant, remembering where he was.

"Apologies…I was thinking." He stowed the report back in the folder and started toward the long black car waiting for them. Settling himself in the back seat, he addressed the driver. "London. New Scotland Yard."

Mycroft snorted, looking down at the file in his hands. Moriarty had likely deduced that, should Sherlock go into hiding, he would break cover to assist John. _And it might have worked, had Sherlock known about this before he left,_ Mycroft thought.

Mycroft was surprised to find that he felt…angry. He might not have much in common with John Watson other than a devotion to his country and to Sherlock, but he respected him (there were few men who did not fear Mycroft, and John was one of these), but he'd be damned before he'd see this good man dragged through the mud in correlation to the charges being trumped up against Sherlock. He would descend upon that wretched little Chief Superintendent like an avenging angel, point out the flaws in the planted evidence in a manner that would teach them that Sherlock wasn't the only Holmes who could _see_, and John would be free before evening fell.

They weren't twenty minutes out from the airfield when his assistant's mobile pinged. She read the text, frowned slightly, and made a call. Moments later she hung up and addressed her boss, who had been observing her unobtrusively from the rear seat.

"Sir, our agent at location Y alpha reports activity from the right sector. The target appears to have been spotted."

The "target" in this case happened to refer to the assassin whom they believed to be Moriarty's second-in-command. Mycroft felt a sudden rush of excitement.

"Change of plans. Return at once to the main office. We have work yet to do today."

"And John Watson?"

Mycroft paused a moment. He glanced down at the arrest report in his lap again.

Ah, yes. John.

Mycroft had promised his brother that he would keep an eye on his friends, keep them safe. John Watson had proven to be a bit of a wild card in the past; there was no telling how his grief over Sherlock's supposed death, played out before his very eyes, would affect him. With Moriarty's top man still running around loose in the greater London area, perhaps being detained at Her Majesty's pleasure was the safest thing for the doctor, at least for now. And the easiest way for Mycroft to keep him under observation – and under control.

"Let's leave him where he is for now, but continue to monitor the situation," Mycroft finally decided. His assistant nodded.

Sherlock wouldn't be pleased, Mycroft supposed, but that hardly mattered as Sherlock wouldn't know. And of course it wouldn't be for long – Mycroft would see to John's release personally as soon as they had corralled the elusive assassin.

Oddly, for one moment Mycroft thought of his brother's pet. He shook the thought away, moved John Watson to the back of his mind, and retrieved his own phone from his coat pocket.

There was much work to do.


	3. Kenneled

**Kenneled**

"Leave him where he is for now" became something of Mycroft's policy regarding John Watson over the weeks subsequent to his brother's clandestine departure from England.

After John was remanded into custody (he never did return to Baker Street after he and Sherlock, handcuffed together, had fled the place), Mycroft saw to it that the public defender from the Legal Aid Society who had accompanied the doctor to the magistrate's court was replaced with a private lawyer who was with John when his case was passed along to the Crown Court. He also reinstated surveillance on John (Grade 2–Active – no need for anything more stringent, really, as it was all too apparent where John was and what he was doing these days).

Apart from that, Mycroft kept his distance from Sherlock's friends. He had shaken DI Lestrade's hand at the funeral and thanked him for his participation in Sherlock's life; he had gone to Baker Street and arranged to use flat B as a pseudo storage space for Sherlock's (and John's) possessions "for the foreseeable future" (during which time he had allowed Mrs. Hudson to prepare him a cup of tea and even weep for a few moments on his shoulder while he patted her awkwardly once or twice); he had offered Molly Hooper a cordial nod and nothing more at the funeral and on the day he identified his brother's body in the company of a police constable, not wanting to give any hint of their association away.

He did not go to see John at all – in fact, they had had no contact from the time the former soldier had stormed out of the Diogones Club the day of Sherlock's leap.

Neither Lestrade nor Mrs. Hudson had made any attempt to get in touch with Mycroft after Sherlock's faux burial, but Molly Hooper turned out to be a bit more problematic. She had performed her part admirably (even in the face of Mrs. Hudson's heartrending grief at the funeral, though Mycroft could see how painful it was for her), but John's predicament was tearing at her conscience. About ten days after John's conviction (that had been in mid-January of 2012) but before the sentencing, Molly had finally begged Mycroft's assistant (she did not have Mycroft's direct contact information) for an interview. He had wanted to put her off – for him to be seen with her, tied to her in any capacity now that Sherlock was supposedly deceased, was a major security risk he wished to avoid at all costs – but his assistant warned him that he might want to step in now…Miss Hooper was in danger of becoming unpredictable.

Aggrieved, Mycroft arranged a late night meeting in Molly's lab at a time when she was supposedly doing catch-up work and his operatives assured him the building was secure and nearly empty. To his huge relief she did _not_ weep, but it was easily apparent that she had been doing so a great deal lately, and that even now tears were not far off.

"I don't know how much longer I can bear it, Mr. Holmes," she had said, her voice trembling slightly. She looked small and fragile and very young somehow, standing behind her desk in her shabby little office, wringing her slender hands together. "Mrs. Hudson must think I'm so awful…she's invited me by several times, but I've told her I can't bear to see the place…it's actually _her_ I can't bear to see; I feel so guilty when she starts talking about Sherlock and looks so sad. Any cases that involve DI Lestrade now I pass along to Keith upstairs. And _John_–" here her voice broke a little. Molly blinked rapidly and visibly swallowed a sob before steadying herself and looking up at Mycroft again. "Have you seen the way they've been talking about him in the papers?"

Mycroft had, of course. He sighed a little. It was true – John Watson, the decorated former solider and once-respected doctor, was being crucified in Sherlock's place.

"Miss Hooper, I assure you–"

"The sentencing is in two days, Mr. Holmes. Two _bloody_ days! They're saying he could go to prison for twenty _years_, and I can't do this, I just can't do this, I thought I could, but–"

"_Miss Hooper_."

Molly stopped and looked up at him, breathing hard and blinking fast in an attempt to prevent the tears from coming.

"Miss Hooper," Mycroft began, making a concentrated effort to gentle his tone. "I assure you, the length of the sentence the judge hands down is utterly irrelevant. When John's name is cleared–"

"When will that happen, Mr. Holmes?" Molly interrupted. (Mycroft _loathed_ being interrupted.) "_When_ will it be cleared? When...when will Sherlock come home?" Her mouth quivered a bit at that last part.

Mycroft sighed. "Soon. Very soon, I hope."

"That's what you said three months ago! _And_ three months before that!"

Mycroft's mouth tightened, displeased. He knew damned well the timetable of three to six months that he and Sherlock had predicted for the complete takedown of Moriarty's empire had turned out to be incorrect. It seemed that every stone they turned – Mycroft at home, Sherlock abroad – revealed more corruption, more factions, more of the deadly web.

"We are doing our best," Mycroft said, striving for a reassuring tone. "It has been a more…_complex_ process than we had first thought, true, but progress is being made, and before long, Sherlock's name _will_ be cleared – and so, by extension, John's."

"You _could_ find a way to clear their names _now_," Molly said plaintively. "I'm sure Sherlock would want you to…does he even _know_ what's happening with John?" she added with a sudden frown.

Mycroft knew he must tread very, very carefully now.

"Miss Hooper." He waited until her eyes met his. "I know you are distressed at Dr. Watson's plight, as am I. But I must warn you again that your silence is imperative to Sherlock's survival. To break it would not help John, and it would only hurt Sherlock."

Molly blanched and looked away. Mycroft paused to let the point sink in still further, then continued.

"There are dangerous people who were in James Moriarty's employ who would be only too happy to 'remove' Dr. Watson – and Detective Inspector Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson – if they had any inkling whatsoever that Sherlock still lives. Or worse, to use them to draw Sherlock out of hiding. And Sherlock's own cover would be compromised. He could be _killed_."

Mycroft paused again.

"Miss Hooper, I understand your difficulty," he said finally. "But I assure you, Dr. Watson is safest where he is, and as soon as possible he will be exonerated, and Sherlock will return, and all will be as it was before.

He had played his hand correctly. Molly, with her foolish, schoolgirl crush on his brother, would want above all things to ensure Sherlock's safety. She backed down at once, and Mycroft knew he would have no more trouble from her.

Only once had Mycroft experienced a twinge of conscience of his own. Sometime in early October of 2011, his assistant had handed over the week's reports on Sherlock's friends. John's was the top file, and when Mycroft opened it the first thing he saw was an 8"x10" black-and-white photo of the doctor being escorted from the Old Bailey, where his case had just been laid. On his left was the lawyer Mycroft had arranged for him. (The lawyer had reported to Mycroft that John had initially rejected his services, saying in no uncertain terms in his pride and anger that he wanted nothing from Mycroft, but Detective Inspector Lestrade had urged him not to be a fool, to take whatever help he could and count it as being owed to him. John had eventually, grudgingly acquiesced.) On John's right was Greg Lestrade himself, who had only recently been reinstated after his thirty-day suspension. (True to his word to Sherlock, Mycroft had managed to prevent the police detective from being demoted; the initial enquiry and subsequent disciplinary action, however, could not be avoided.) Despite the facts that Lestrade was currently _persona non grata_ around the Yard and that it wasn't really his purview, he had fought to accompany John to and from the Crown Court, undoubtedly, Mycroft guessed, as a way to show moral support.

John was the photo's chief subject, though; the news photographer had caught him full on, and Mycroft found himself arrested momentarily by the image.

Someone (probably Lestrade) had draped John's rain jacket over his shoulders; he could not put it on properly as his wrists were handcuffed in front of him. Underneath the jacket he was wearing that awful suit he had worn to Moriarty's trial, a suit he'd probably owned before he went to Afghanistan. (Mycroft deduced that John had likely not bothered to replace it while he was in the army, as he would have worn his dress uniform for formal occasions.) Never physically imposing to begin with, John looked a bit thinner than he had when Mycroft had last seen him, but unlike most prisoners, he stood very straight with his head well up, chin raised and expression set. His hair was neatly trimmed, short around his ears.

It was the look on John's face that caught the normally unflappable Mycroft, however. Eyes forward, studiously ignoring the journalists Mycroft knew were crowding around off-camera, screaming questions at him, John's stoic expression was that of a stalwart captain looking out to sea as his ship sank with him on it, or a martyr on the way to the stake, grimly determined to make a brave show of it as he underwent lash and flame.

The black-and-white photo made it impossible to tell if silver strands had crept into John's sandy hair, but the lines in his face definitely cut more deeply than before. Yet despite this – despite the cheap suit and the bound wrists and the restraining hands on his arms and shoulders, despite the hurled insults and invasive questions and insensitive accusations to which he appeared to be deaf but no doubt felt in his heart, despite the intense grief at the loss of his dearest friend and the trauma of having witnessed his suicide, despite the knowledge of the grave injustice and absolute _wrongness_ of the whole thing – there was a beauty, a _nobility_ in his expression that transcended the shame and disgrace that being in the dock must be for this proud, dedicated former solider who had never in his life committed a dishonorable act.

Mycroft suddenly noticed the photo was trembling slightly. He realized it was because his own _hands_ were trembling slightly, and he cursed himself for being sentimental. He was certain he was doing the right thing for all concerned by allowing John's journey through the court system play out, but looking at the photo made him doubt. He could not afford to doubt himself, and so he purposefully hid the photo beneath the written report.

Five weeks later, John Watson's trial began. A month after that, he was found guilty as an accessory to kidnapping. (The charge of attempted murder was dropped as the video left on John's blog by the man the press was calling Richard Brook raised reasonable doubt as to the veracity of whether or not the mercury had been planted.) Citing mitigating circumstances (John's lawyer had argued, against John's wishes, that the doctor had not been of sound mind due to post-traumatic stress disorder and that he had been influenced and manipulated by the late Sherlock Holmes), the judge sentenced John to ten years in prison.

John had stood with a dignity that belied his surroundings while the sentence was pronounced, only a slight twitch of a muscle in his left cheek offering any hint of what emotion might be hidden behind his impassive expression. The doctor held his head high as they led him away, utterly stoic except for a slight, brief smile of reassurance in the direction of his sister and his former landlady (both of whom were weeping) as he passed. He also quirked a grateful half-smile at Greg Lestrade when the detective inspector had briefly taken his arm just outside the courtroom and whispered that this wasn't over, by God, not by a long chalk.

Upon exiting the courtroom, John was immediately removed to Belmarsh for holding, and shortly afterwards transferred to Frankland.

And, despite Mycroft's assurances (to Molly and to himself) that this would all be resolved "soon," there he remained for the next twenty-one months.

* * *

_**Author's note:**_ I apologize for any inaccuracies. I did do some research into the British judicial process; hopefully what I came up with is close to accurate at least enough to not be jarring to those who might know better.

• The timeline, I hope, is believable…I've read in my research that it takes, on average, 21 weeks between the initial offense to the conclusion of a criminal court case in England and Wales: three months between the occurrence of the offence and the defendant being charged in court (assuming the offense is discovered fairly quickly); another five weeks before the actual court case begins/initial hearing; and another month for the case to be tried and concluded. Thus, assuming that Sherlock's fall took place in late May/early June of 2011 (going by the last entry in John's blog) and John would have been arrested and remanded on the same day, and including some extra time to allow for the Christmas holidays, I elected to have the conviction take place in mid-January of 2012 with sentencing about ten days later.

• Greg's 30-day suspension would not have taken place right way; there would have been an enquiry first followed by a disciplinary hearing. Thus, the suspension would have begun after Sherlock's funeral and concluded before John was formally charged. This would have been an unpaid leave.

• John's sentence of ten years was based on an average of other child abduction cases I researched, stranger abductions that did not include the deaths or sexual assault of the children involved, allowing for the mitigating circumstances of John being an accessory and not the alleged perpetrator.

• While John would likely have been tried in London, he probably would be imprisoned in a class A (high security) facility somewhere outside London.


	4. October 2013

**October 2013**

"And what about John Watson?"

It was the pause – a pause so slight most people would have missed it, but he was _not_ most people, and he knew his brother well – that first alerted Sherlock to the fact that the answer to his question might not be the one that he was expecting (_hoping?_) to hear.

Having just (very gingerly – he was still sore from the beating he'd undergone in the Serbian prison) slipped into his suit jacket, Sherlock froze in his task of straightening his lapels and turned his head towards his brother. He felt a prickle of unease at the back of his neck, just above the hairline, when he saw the look on Mycroft's face. It was a wary, calculating look, a look that Sherlock had seen before. A look that said, _An ordinary person might find what I am about to relate distressing; my brother is not ordinary, but he _is_ unpredictable, and so I cannot be certain as to exactly how he will react – therefore, I must proceed with great caution._

Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

Mycroft gestured to his assistant, who stepped forward and handed Mycroft a thick file. Mycroft nodded. "Leave us," he said quietly.

She went, shutting the door behind her. Sherlock turned to face Mycroft. "What is it, Mycroft?" He demanded. His eyes were on the file, but Mycroft did not extend it to him. Not yet. Instead, he simply studied his younger brother for a moment.

Sherlock had kept to Mycroft's rule about checking in once every fortnight, probably more because he wanted to ensure that Mycroft would have no excuse to come after him than from a desire to avoid worrying his older brother. Their conversations were sometimes long and detailed, sometimes short and to the point, but they were always, always focused on the task at hand – dismantling Moriarty's empire entirely, nothing more and nothing less. Occasionally Mycroft would inquire after his brother's health in such a way as to make the question sound flippant, partly disguising his actual concern, and Sherlock would respond in a like manner that would mask his own attempts to reassure his brother (and, by extension, their parents, to whom Mycroft would surely be reporting back).

Never once during the twenty-eight months that Sherlock was away did he ask about anything or anyone in England: not his parents, not Baker Street, not Mrs. Hudson, not New Scotland Yard, not Lestrade…not John. Not once.

Mycroft had wondered about that. Of course, he didn't object to it, or offer any unsolicited information (no point in opening a Pandora's box worth of trouble if he couldn't answer Sherlock's questions about John truthfully), but he did wonder.

Mycroft had narrowed Sherlock's lack of curiosity down to three possibilities: firstly, that he was so focused on the job at hand that he neither wanted nor needed any distractions, and news from home, especially news of unimportant, day-to-day happenings, would definitely qualify as "distractions." Secondly, he probably trusted Mycroft to keep him informed if anything _really_ important happened…for instance, if something were to happen to one or both of their parents, who were in their seventies.

Thirdly…ah, thirdly. Mycroft considered a moment. In many ways, his younger brother was still a child: an easily distracted child. Take his toys away and he'll fuss, but generally only until he is given a new one. Sherlock was, Mycroft knew, far too brilliant to be able to truly relate to the people he naively called his friends. He might have missed them at first, but once his attention was diverted to his new adventures…well, Mycroft was reasonably certain that Sherlock did not ask after his old "friends" simply because he didn't think of them anymore.

Well…Mycroft _had_ been reasonably certain. The way Sherlock was looking at him now, with an air of anxious expectation, like a man bracing himself to hear bad news but hoping against hope he would hear anything but…Mycroft would have to reevaluate. He could reassure his brother on one thing, anyway, and that with absolute certainty.

"John is alive and safe, Sherlock. They are _all_ alive and safe."

Rather than reassure Sherlock, it seemed to make him even more uneasy. He turned to face Mycroft fully.

"Mycroft," he said warningly, his voice low and dark. "Where is John?"

Mycroft gave him a humorless smile. "How would _I_ know?"

"You _always_ know. Where's he going to be tonight?"

Mycroft studied at him a moment longer with that appraising gaze, then took a deep breath.

"Tonight he will most likely be where he's been since …shortly after your name was cleared a week ago: sleeping on the sofa at the flat belonging to Detective Inspector Lestrade."

Sherlock blinked, nonplussed. "Why would he be staying with Lestrade? Sentiment? Are they celebrating my exoneration? Why would Lestrade have a flat in town? Ah, he and his wife have finally finalized the divorce…obvious. Likely he chose a flat nearer to the Met when he moved out, leaving the house in the suburbs to his wife, save himself the commute…a single man, divorced, would find it difficult to afford a large flat in the city on a policeman's salary. Lestrade isn't likely to take on a flat mate at this point in his life…must be a little more than a bedsit. So why not have a celebration at Baker Street? More room, Mrs. Hudson would no doubt like to take part, probably would provide the food…makes no sense."

All this was said in a typical Sherlockian, deductive rush. His speech skidded to a halt and his clear gray eyes locked on Mycroft's again.

"So, Mycroft…what is it you're not telling me? Is…something wrong with Mrs. Hudson?"

Mycroft made a mental note of the slight wavering in Sherlock's voice as he referred to Mrs. Hudson and stepped nearer, holding out John's file. "This will tell you everything you want to know."

Keeping his narrowed eyes on his brother, Sherlock took the file. He pinned Mycroft with his piercing gaze a moment longer, then turned his back on him as he opened the file and began to leaf through it.

Mycroft could pinpoint the exact moment when Sherlock saw John's arrest report with the charges clearly laid: _accessory to kidnapping. Attempted murder. Assaulting a law enforcement officer. Resisting arrest. Fleeing the scene of a crime._ There was no discernable movement, but instead Sherlock's body seemed suddenly to turn to stone, becoming hard, still and cold. The only sound was the turning of the pages, more and more rapidly as Sherlock flipped through the file, until at last he stopped at the most recent addition and all sound ceased.

A moment passed. Then another.

Mycroft became uneasy. Hesitating, he stepped forward. "Sherlock."

No answer.

Mycroft tried again. "Sherlock?" And he moved to touch his brother's arm.

It was so sudden, so unexpected when Sherlock yanked his arm away, spun around and punched him in one smooth, lightning fast movement, that Mycroft didn't realize what had happened until he found himself blinking bemusedly up at the ceiling, a fierce burn in his jaw quickly dulling to a numb throb. He shook his head a little to clear it and rose up on one elbow quickly when he heard Sherlock utter a sharp, short cry of distress that instantly propelled Mycroft back some twenty-six years to a Yorkshire kennel, but the only thing he saw was a flap of his brother's coat disappearing around the door frame and a newspaper clipping fluttering to the floor.

Sitting all the way up, Mycroft carefully pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it to his lips with one hand while he slowly reached for the newspaper clipping with the other. It was the photo and article from the Daily Mail, the one from the day John had been vindicated in court. The press that had been so eager to castigate Sherlock and John two years ago was now singing their praises and calling on the Met to be held accountable for their blunders which led to one man being driven to suicide and the other to having his name dragged through the mud (ironic, that) and incarcerated for two years.

Mycroft studied the photo, his throat tight. It echoed the October 2011 photo in that it showed John Watson exiting the Old Bailey accompanied by his lawyer and Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade. This time, though, John wasn't standing quite so tall and impervious to the shouts and calls for his attention. Though his face was as stoic as before, this time he seemed clearly uneasy by the proximity of the reporters, and very intent on trying to avoid the cameras being pointed at him, hanging back slightly behind Lestrade, keeping his eyes on the ground, turning his face away. It was a hopeless attempt, though, and the photographer had no trouble documenting in full color the horrific, two-inch wide scar that now stretched from the corner of John's left eye, down over his cheekbone, and around his mouth to the point of his chin…as well as the haunted, guarded expression he could not quite conceal.

Perhaps, Mycroft, thought, rubbing his jaw, Sherlock had been thinking of his friends during his absence more than he had surmised.

* * *

Lestrade waited until he was in the dark, chilly, subterranean car park before reaching into his open coat to draw the pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. He threw a cursory glance around while he tapped one cigarette against the cellophane pack before raising it to his lips. Seeing and hearing no one, he flipped open his lighter. Ostensibly he had given up these things, but it had been a hell of a week, and old crutches are easy to return to when pain flares up. And dear Lord, had it flared up this past week…all that shit regarding Sherlock and Moriarty hitting the fan and bringing up the old hurts, the story exploding in the press, the black eye to the Met (though it was Lestrade himself who had finally managed to prove that Moriarty had indeed invented Richard Brook and had set both Sherlock and John up), and then the whole mess with John…Lestrade felt like he could go home and sleep for a month, maybe more. But it just wasn't on – there was still far much to deal with at the Yard, and Mrs. Hudson and John – John, especially – needed him.

He suppressed a sigh as he took his first drag. At least somebody did.

It had been about a month before John's conviction – right around Christmas, and wasn't that bloody lovely timing – that he and his wife had split for good. Almost exactly a year to the day, come to think of it, that Sherlock had told him she was sleeping with the PE teacher. He had been angry and upset at Sherlock's callousness and lack of empathy at the time, but he supposed it was because he, Lestrade, had been badly shaken to find that his efforts to reconcile were being met with further betrayal. He hadn't wanted to admit that his marriage just wasn't working – he'd given his word – but in the end he'd recognized the truth and moved into a small bedsit not far from the Yard. He wished at the time that he'd listened to Sherlock…and then wondered if, in his own way, Sherlock hadn't been trying to help him by telling him the truth.

It was a bit demoralizing at his age and place in life to be back in something like a bedsit, but over time he got used to it, and even to like it…he might get something a bit bigger at some point, but it was nice not having much to clean, not having to go far for the shopping, and not having a long commute in. And if he was sorry that John had had to curl up on his small sofa these past few nights, John himself didn't seem to mind, and indeed seemed to find the small size of the bedsit…reassuring.

John was accustomed to small spaces now.

Lestrade took a deep drag and let it out slowly, shaking his head in admiration. Brave John. He had stayed steady as a rock for almost every bit of these past two years, but when the judge had announced that he was now deemed to be innocent and cleared of all charges and was free to go, the blood had drained from his face and he had staggered slightly, lurching into his lawyer's side. His sister had flung herself at him, sobbing and apologizing, and Mrs. Hudson had pulled him into an embrace that was shockingly strong for a septuagenarian and begged him to "please come home now." John had not responded to either of them but instead had raised helpless, shell-shocked eyes to Lestrade's.

Lestrade had come to the rescue at once. He had been unable to help Sherlock when it counted, but he could and would help John.

"You come on home with me, mate," he'd said, grasping John by his good shoulder. Harriet had protested that John was _her_ brother, and Mrs. Hudson had argued that all John's things were still at Baker Street, waiting for him "just as he left them," but Lestrade gently interposed himself between John and the two women and placated them, telling them they would get it sorted out, but for now John just needed to get his bearings, and if they tried taking him back to Baker Street or to his sister's the press would camp out at the door – with Lestrade, he could lie low for a bit. The gratitude on John's face had made his approval of the plan perfectly clear, and the two men had fled the Old Bailey, John almost stepping on Lestrade's heels in his attempt to stay close and away from pushy reporters.

By the time they reached Lestrade's car John was regulating his breathing in an attempt to keep down a panic attack. The scar that he'd got nearly a year ago stood out on his face like a brand. They stood for a moment, facing one another, then Lestrade put his hand on the back of John's neck and pulled him in for a wordless embrace. John had stiffened at first, then the tension seemed to run out of him and he leaned the top of his head against Lestrade's chest and just breathed for a moment, in through the nose, out through the mouth, muttering steadily under his breath, "Oh, Jesus…Jesus," fighting back the tears.

They'd gone back to Lestrade's place where John had at once dropped down onto the sofa and fallen asleep without even taking off his shoes. He'd slept for thirteen straight hours.

The second night John's sleep hadn't been quite so restful. He'd awakened with a cry that had Lestrade bolting up in bed. "_John_?"

"Put on the light! _Put on the light_!"

Lestrade had scrambled to do so. He blinked as his eyes grew accustomed to the sudden blaze, and when they cleared he saw John sitting up on the sofa across the room, blankets twisted around his waist, heels pushing at his eyes as though he could reach through the sockets to wipe the dream away.

Lestrade watched him for a moment, then quietly got up and made tea. By the time he carried the two cups over to the sofa and handed one off to John, the doctor's breathing had slowed to near normal, and he looked up with bleary eyes and tousled hair.

"Thanks," he mumbled, taking the tea. Then, lower still, "sorry."

"No, mate, don't…don't apologize, yeah?" Greg said. He started to reach out, to put a hand on John's shoulder, then something made him draw back.

After a beat of silence, John told Greg he _would_ go home, eventually (and by home, Lestrade knew he meant Baker Street), but it wasn't just the reporters keeping him away right now…it was the thought of all that space…and, even more, of everything being exactly the same as it had been on that night (barring Mrs. Hudson's inevitable tidying), a shrine to a life that no longer existed. It would be like stepping back in time to the day Sherlock had died, and John admitted that he wasn't sure he could face that just yet.

He'd missed the funeral; he'd never been to Sherlock's grave. For John, Sherlock's death was almost as fresh as when it first happened.

Lestrade sighed, dropped the cigarette to the ground, and ground it out under his heel, only half-smoked. It hadn't tasted good, and he knew "Doctor John" would give him the eyebrow if he smelled it when Greg got back.

Then, as he turned to his car, the detective inspector heard a voice from the beyond the grave.

"Those things will kill you."

The detective inspector froze in the act of reaching for the car door handle.

Greg Lestrade was no stranger to death and loss. He had loved and lost many people over the years to illness, accidents and old age (and yes, even to suicide before Sherlock Holmes). If it had been any voice other than Sherlock's, he might have fainted or doubted his own senses. As it was, he simply stilled as his brain attempted to process what he had heard.

Could it be true? Could Sherlock Holmes, somehow, have beaten death itself? No, not even Sherlock Holmes could come back from the dead…but could Sherlock have faked his own death so successfully that even his best friend, a _doctor_, a _witness_, could be fooled?

_Yes_, his brain decided. _Yes, he could_.

Lestrade turned his eyes outward to the driver's side window and saw, reflected in the glass, an achingly familiar profile. He could even see that the silhouette's collar was popped up.

"Oh, you _bastard_," he whispered.

The sudden rush of highly conflicting feelings – joy, rage, anguish, hope, fear, wonderment, bewilderment, sorrow – made him slightly dizzy.

"_As far as possible…try not to punch him."_

So he spun around and hugged said bastard will all his strength instead, ignoring the surprised, pained grunt this elicited.


	5. September 2012

**Author's note:** I was going to wait and post this Sunday, but I thought – happy Friday! I hope people don't mind the time jump; I will be including chapters like this now and then to show what happened to our characters during the two-year hiatus.**  
**

**September 2012**

Today, Lestrade thought grimly as he approached the tall gate at HMP Frankland. He was going to find out what the hell John's problem was _today_, and he wasn't bloody leaving until he did.

When the guard at the Visitor's Centre entrance asked to see his visiting order and personal ID, Lestrade pushed through his official police ID instead. "Detective Inspector Lestrade of New Scotland Yard. I'm here in an official police capacity," he said authoritatively in his gravelly voice. "It's imperative that I speak with prisoner SJ1311 _today_."

The guard's eyes widened slightly as she regarded him through the transparent barrier. "One moment please, sir." She retrieved Lestrade's ID from the receiving tray, rotated on her chair back towards her desk, and lifted the phone from its cradle.

When Greg came here, he normally used his regular driver's license to get in. But those "unofficial" visits needed to be planned at least two days in advance and required Greg to have a visiting order as well, which he did _not_ have because John had not sent him one in three _bloody_ months.

Gregory Lestrade was one of two people who were on John Watson's list of approved visitors at Frankland. The other was Mrs. Hudson, and she hadn't received a VO in months, either.

It hadn't been easy to get them on the list in the first place. Her Majesty's prisons (particularly category A and B prisons) were notoriously strict about who was allowed to visit a prisoner, and because the list of approved visitors was quite small (usually three), favor generally fell to family members and partners. Since John was rather short on relatives and Lestrade was an officer of the law, his request to have Mrs. Hudson and Greg on the roster was eventually granted. (Harriet Watson had also once been on the list, but John had revoked her privilege six months earlier, after only two visits. When Lestrade asked him why, John had declined to elaborate.)

It had taken a bit for them to notice that John had stopped sending them the visiting orders because setting up the visits was so bloody difficult to begin with. John was allowed to have three visits each month, but they couldn't be spontaneous…the Visitor's Centre had a rule about scheduling at least two days ahead, but even that wasn't enough as the slots filled up quickly. In the first few months after John's conviction, Greg usually got out to see him twice a month – once with Mrs. Hudson and once on his own, leaving the third visit for John's sister. When they learned that her brother had barred Harry from coming (and that had taken a few weeks to drag out of John), Mrs. Hudson added a second visit on her own. It wasn't easy for her – a visit on her own meant a three-hour train journey and then hiring a car for the rest – but Baker Street was very lonely for her now, and she hated the thought of John all alone in that terrible place with no familiar, friendly face day after day, week after week.

The only way for people outside the prison to contact John was through the post – he had no access to a computer, and only he could make calls (never receive them) using the prison phone (they had confiscated his mobile, of course, and telephone calls were regulated nearly as strictly as the visits).

The first two months John had called to tell them he'd waited too long to get on the schedule for visits; when he sent a letter to that effect for a third month with no visits, Mrs. Hudson had had enough.

"Something's wrong, Greg, I _know_ it is," she argued as she served him some of her home-baked shortbread to go with his tea (Greg had promised John he would look in on the elderly landlady often, and had grown to very much enjoy his visits).

"Look, Mrs. Hudson, John's not the first person I've heard of who's had all kinds of trouble getting visits arranged…they make it so bloody complicated–"

For an answer, Mrs. Hudson handed him John's letter. It was apologetic, mildly affectionate in John's fond but shy way, and very short. It included a couple of sad attempts at being funny about the bureaucracy of the thing, and Greg could see why Mrs. Hudson was concerned – it felt like John was trying to deflect her from asking too many questions, and that he would rather not write at all but knew he needed to placate his ex-landlady.

Greg stared at the missive, frowning.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said finally, handing the letter back. "I'll get a note in the post out to him this very night…if his answer to me isn't satisfactory, I'll run out there, yeah? I'll be able to get in to see him whether he arranges it or not…I'd have done it before now, but I need to be careful claiming official business and all that…we could get into trouble…"

"Would you dear?" Mrs. Hudson said, lifting a hand to her throat in relief. She sat down across from him at her kitchen table and took his hand and squeezed it. "I'd feel so much better."

"Don't you worry," Lestrade promised.

But after he got John's response to his own letter (a carefully couched, "Mate, what the hell is going on, Mrs. Hudson is worried sick?" sort of note), Lestrade became worried himself:

_Hey, Greg,_

_Thanks for the note, mate – I do appreciate hearing from you. Sorry I've been a bit out of touch – I've had a lot of correspondence to catch up on. Guess I've been distracted and let the scheduling get away from me. I'll get it sorted soon. But in the meantime, there's no rush to come see me, you know – I'm not going anywhere, ha ha. You and Mrs. Hudson have your own lives to lead, and I don't fancy the idea of her taking that train journey by herself, anyway, now that winter is coming on._

_I'll write again soon, yeah? Stay safe, and if you think of it, write up a couple of cases for me (nothing too terrifying, though – they read through incoming and outgoing mail here)._

_Cheers,_

_John_

_Distracted. Really, John?_ Lestrade thought now. He had been ushered to a small room with a two-way mirror, rectangular table, and two chairs, not unlike the interrogation rooms at NSY. _They haven't given you a work detail and you're in your bloody cell a minimum of twenty-one hours a day, and even though you tried to hide it under the table I could see how badly your left hand was twitching on my last visit–"_

The guard opened the door, ushered John in, and stepped back into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. John, looking decidedly bemused (no doubt wondering what this was all about) looked up and froze. And Greg, when he got a good look at John, froze also.

Not for the first time since this whole, wretched business began, Lestrade was glad that prison kits didn't resemble the jumpsuits found in American prisons – it would have been hard seeing John in such a getup. Even though the standard issue dull grey tracksuit and blue t-shirt were a far cry from John's usual jeans, jumpers and haversack, John didn't look much different than he did on their visits to the NSY gym – so long as one didn't dwell overmuch on the fact that the stamped logo on the front of his sweatshirt said "HMP" instead of "Army."

But it wasn't the clothes that took Greg off guard now. It was his face – specifically, the vicious, recently knitted red gash that stretched from John's brow to his chin on the left side of his face, its widest part over the left cheekbone. On either side of the long gash, tiny pink points showed where stitches had gone in to hold the flesh together and later been removed. The wound looked as though it had been infected at one point and was still in the process of healing.

The two men stared at one another a moment, eyes wide, mouths open. Lestrade found his voice first.

"_Christ_. Oh, sweet _Jesus_–"

John opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Greg. It's not–"

"_Don't_ John. Do _not_ tell me it's not as bad as it looks. Bloody hell! Don't you _dare_."

Lestrade raised both hands to his head in agitation.

"Look, let's just–" John started.

Lestrade dropped his hands, grabbed one of the metal folding chairs, yanked it out from the table and set it down again with a metallic slam that made the guard outside the door shoot them a discreet glance.

"Sit down, _now_," Lestrade barked, and so commanding was his tone that the former soldier responded to it instinctively, sitting down with a sigh. He put his hands on the table in front of him and looked down; it was then that Lestrade noticed they'd cuffed him. _Of course…they think I'm here to question him on some other crime, _he thought.

He was too upset and pissed off to call the guard in and ask him to remove the cuffs, though. He had the feeling they would refuse, anyway.

Letting a sharp huff of air out through his nose and mouth, Greg sat down across from John.

"I guess I know now why you've been refusing visits."

John looked up ruefully. God, he looked awful, Lestrade thought. He had lost a bit of weight and was pale from being indoors most of the day. His eyes also looked a little "squirrely," Greg thought, and no wonder if they were keeping him in his cell much of the time. John Watson was not a man who did well with idleness.

"Will you tell me what happened?" Greg asked, striving to keep his voice calm. _Just think of it as another investigation, _he told himself sternly. But that went out the window when John answered with one word.

"Sherlock," John said simply.

"Sherlock?"

"Sherlock," John repeated. He smiled a little with wry humor. "We were looking for people who believed in him, Greg. We were looking in the wrong places…we should have come here!"

"John, I swear to you, I made sure, _sure_, that you wouldn't be sent somewhere with criminals you'd helped Sherlock take down."

"And there aren't any here, Greg," John said gently. "Good job for me, too; I'd probably be dead by now if there were."

"Then how–"

John laughed shortly. It was a bitter sound.

"Greg, the first day we met you told me that you'd known Sherlock for five years. He worked a lot of cases before I came along, and I'll bet you there's not a prison in England – hell, in the whole _UK_ – that isn't hosting at least one guest kindly referred to them by one Mr. Sherlock Holmes. As it is, this place has _seven_, and not one of them believes he's a fake. Real kindred spirits I've found here, me."

Lestrade couldn't stop staring at the ugly gash. "What the _hell_ did he get you with?"

"Quite clever, actually." John sounded strained. "Toothbrush handle, melted so a razor could be pressed in. Never saw it coming. One swipe on the way in from the exercise yard and my eye was full of blood…I thought it'd been put out for a moment. Wound up with forty-seven stitches."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

"What happened to that…him?"

"Did a stint in solitary* and got an add-on to his sentence," John replied.

Lestrade blew out his breath slowly. "Well, that's something, at least." He was quiet for a moment, then said hesitantly, "Do you want me to–"

"No."

"But–"

"I said _no_, Greg. I need to find my own way in here."

"But John–"

"Greg, if you make waves, they'll just transfer me, and then I'll have to start from the bottom again," John cut in sharply. "Life in here…it's a hierarchy, you have to establish your place in the pecking order. There's no way 'round it."

John grimaced down at the table, then looked Greg in the eye.

"When I first got here I had three strikes against me that instantly made me a target. First, they could see I'm not what you'd call a big guy. Second, they thought I might be a nonce**, seeing as how I'm in here as an accessory to child abduction. Well, they figured out right quick I'm not an easy mark," here John smiled grimly, and Greg managed a small smile in return. He'd learned long ago at the Academy that blokes like John – little guys with neat, compact builds – were usually tough as iron and the best runners to boot because they could go on and on for miles. They were also good fighters, able to use their lower center of gravity to their advantage.

"Something, I don't know what, convinced them I'm not a nonce," John went on.

Greg knew the answer to that one, too…anybody who knew John for more than a day would be able to tell that he was a man of integrity.

"So now all I have left to deal with is this crew of Sherlock's admirers, who've been more than happy to express their admiration of him to me," John finished. He looked at Lestrade long and seriously. "Now I'm getting jumped every other week instead of every other day. If I'm transferred, I'll have to start all over from the bottom of the food chain again."

Lestrade didn't know what to say. He hated this.

"Besides," John tried to smile. "Gives me something to do, working out how to deal with them. God knows I'm short on diversions these days." He forced a laugh." Talk about boredom…poor Sherlock, he wouldn't last five minutes in here!"

He was trying to make Lestrade laugh, to lighten the mood. Greg stretched his lips unconvincingly, then gave up the effort as a worried frown took his face over again.

"But maybe a different facility–"

"Like I said, Greg, all of them are home to at least one of Sherlock's past cases. Besides…" he hesitated.

"Yeah?"

John looked away, a bit embarrassed. "They might move me somewhere even more difficult to get to from London. I…I don't want you and Mrs. Hudson going to too much trouble, you understand, but..."

Lestrade's expression turned hard. "Can't think why that would bloody matter, since you weren't sending us visiting orders. You were just going to stop contacting us altogether, weren't you, try to sort of fade out of our lives for our own good, is that it?"

"I would have got in touch eventually!" John snapped, stung.

Lestrade's voice rose then, too. "Oh, really? Do you know how frantic Mrs. Hudson's been these past two months? No, of course you don't, because you haven't even _called_ her! _I'm_ the one who's had to hand her the tissues and tell her you'll get in touch when she cries and worries."

Lestrade was suddenly aware that he sounded like a member of his team who was always arguing with her brother over the care of their elderly mother. He shoved the thought aside as his anger rose still higher, thinking of Mrs. Hudson's distress – and his own. "Even if you don't give a damn what _I_ think, I'd at least hope you'd think of her–"

"I _am_ thinking of her, dammit! I don't want her to see me like this!" John yelled, motioning to his face with his bound hands.

That shut Lestrade up. Some of the heat went out of him as he met John's glare, for he thought he could discern a trace of pleading in the doctor's dark blue eyes. Letting out a long breath, Lestrade laid his palms over the table and he looked down unseeingly at the metal surface for a moment, trying to regulate his breathing. He counted to thirty in his head, then looked up again.

"John," he finally said, his voice gentler now. "You're talking about never seeing Mrs. Hudson anymore. Is that what you really want?"

At that, John closed his eyes and bowed his head, lips pressed tightly together. He was a doctor; he knew full well that, barring plastic surgery, there was no way to hide the wound…despite the careful stitching job, it was going to leave a prominent scar.

"No, of course not," he sighed, sitting back in his chair. "I was hoping it would look a bit better before she did come again, though, you know? She…" John quirked a rueful smile. "Well, she won't be pleased when she sees it."

"No joke," Greg agreed fervently, sitting back in his own chair. "She'll want to take down the bastard herself!"

They both chuckled quietly at this.

After a long silence, John sighed and sat up a bit, looking earnestly at Lestrade. "Would you…?"

"I'll…explain what happened," Greg promised. "And prepare her for what she's going to see." _Insofar as I'm able. Jesus._

"Thanks, mate." John managed a small smile.

And that was all. By unspoken agreement, the subject was dropped, and Lestrade filled John in on the doings at the Yard (Anderson's wife had found him and Donovan out and given him an ultimatum – her or Sally, who was not pleased when Anderson cancelled their weekend trip to Brighton), and John talked about letters he'd received from a couple of old Army buddies who were still standing by him and shared funny stories about a young bloke in for dealing who seemed a goodhearted lad overall who had attached himself to John a bit (he had the rather impossible surname of "Wiggins"). In this way, each doing his best to pretend everything was all normal and fine, the hour passed.

As Greg was leaving, though, he retained John's hand a moment longer than usual when John offered it to him to shake and said, quietly but earnestly, "Don't disappear on us, John, yeah? We've already lost Sherlock, and Mrs. Hudson and me…well, we couldn't stand it if we lost you, too."

John's expression softened. "I won't, Greg. Promise." He gave Lestrade's hand a quick squeeze, then let it go and stepped back as the guard came in.

Lestrade gave him a warning look. "You'd better call me in a couple of days…I mean it, mate. I'm going to have a talk with Mrs. Hudson tonight, and she won't want to wait to come visit once she hears you've got it sorted."

"Right."

Something was bothering Greg, though, he thought as he left that grim place behind – _had_ been bothering him throughout the entire conversation with John. It wasn't until he reached his car and sat down behind the wheel that he was able to put his finger on it. John had seemed…_better_ than he had at any time since they'd first realized he was being set up as Sherlock's accomplice, despite the horrific facial injury. Rubbing his forehead with his right hand, Greg remembered the day he'd shown up to escort John to his first hearing. The doctor, his face worn with weariness and grief, had looked at him in mild amazement.

"_What are you doing here, Greg?"_

"_Figured you could use a friend at your side."_

_John had had the poker-faced mask on from the beginning, but a flash of some strong emotion passed through his blue eyes before he managed to push it down – gratitude?_

"_It's good of you, but foolish. You're in enough trouble yourself," he said flatly._

"_I couldn't be arsed." Lestrade was surprised by the fierceness in his own voice as he said this._

_John had smiled slightly, then – a weary, bitter smile that did not reach his eyes. "I'm_ _going down for this, Greg. You know it and I know it. It's going to happen because Moriarty arranged it that way, and Sherlock's not here to bail me out of trouble this time." He didn't add that it seemed only fair, as he, John, had failed to bail Sherlock out at the end._

"I'm_ here," Greg said sharply. Sherlock's name hit his heart like a knife constructed of guilt and sadness and regret. "_I'm_ here, and I'm not leaving you alone in this. They can sack me, but I'm going to keep looking, on my own time if I have to, and I'm going to get you out of this. I might not be as fast about it as Sherlock is…was. But I'm getting you out, do you hear?"_

_He had said it like a vow, and he had meant it as such – he had not been there for Sherlock when it had counted, but he would be there for John: for John's sake, for Sherlock's, and for his own._

John had been grateful, but it had not erased the look of despair mixed with grief lurking just under the surface in his dark blue eyes. He had never been panicked or frightened; he had seemed to accept his fate from the beginning. But the depression became far more apparent when he actually began serving his sentence. Like Sherlock himself, John wasn't a man who did well with boredom – though he didn't deal with it by shooting up walls. Instead, he began to shut down and withdraw into himself. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson had both been very worried about him, and how the imprisonment would affect him over time.

Today, though, there had been something slightly…_manic_ in John's expression. Something almost excited, as though he was welcoming the element of danger Sherlock's enemies were introducing into his prison life. John might not seek out trouble, like Sherlock, but he certainly wasn't of a nature to steer clear of it once it found him.

Greg Lestrade sighed as he pulled out of the car park and began the long drive back to London. Not for the first time, he wondered if John Watson hadn't _dealt_ with his PTSD so much as sidestepped it by keeping his mind and body active and engaged in Sherlock's cases. He seemed like such an easygoing, normal bloke that many at the Yard wondered what on earth he saw in Sherlock Holmes that made the doctor want to befriend the difficult yet brilliant detective, but Lestrade knew there were similarities that ran deep.

He just hoped those similarities wouldn't get John into more trouble than he'd already had.

* * *

Three days later, John kept his word and phoned Lestrade, who told him he'd sat Mrs. Hudson down and gently told her what had happened and what she could expect to see on her next visit to John. Mrs. Hudson had been deeply distressed, but also angry – at _John_.

"You tell _Dr. Watson_ when he phones you that he'd better have that visiting order to me as fast as possible if he knows what's good for him!"

John had laughed and pretended to be frightened, promising earnestly to obey at once, and a week later Mrs. Hudson was on the train to Durham.

He had been so nervous about the visit that morning that Bill Wiggins had to tell him twice that he'd taken John's advice and enrolled in the open university course before John truly heard him. That had been in the games room during the "association hour," and John's visit with Mrs. Hudson was scheduled for right after.

"'ere. You been out of it all mornin'. Want to shoot some pool?"

"Can't…got a visitor."

"Oh, so's that's why you're distracted! Woman is it?" Bill looked excited, and John laughed.

"Yeah, but she's more of the mum variety, Billy."

"We'll take what we can get in 'ere!" Bill grinned.

Mrs. Hudson was waiting when John was escorted into the Visitor's Centre. She did not, as John had feared, fall apart when she saw his face, but she did step forward without a word and put her arms around him. The hug lasted so long that the screw† that had brought John in began to exhibit signs of uneasiness. Close physical contact with a visitor was permitted at the start and end of each visit, but if it went on too long a guard could elect to put a stop to it, or even to cut the visit short, so John gently disengaged himself from Mrs. Hudson's arms and led her to a chair. There, she took his hands in hers and just sighed, "Oh, John." He bowed his head, feeling unaccountably ashamed, and they sat in near silence for most of their hour together.

* * *

* _Solitary confinement_ – still used as a disciplinary measure in UK prisons, but very rarely (it was imposed upon fewer than 50 prisoners in 2013); saved for the most grievous offenses, solitary confinement generally takes place in the prisoner's own or a similar single-occupancy cell ("pad") and has a maximum duration of 21 days.

** _nonce_ – prison slang for a pedophile.

† _screw_ – prison slang for a prison guard.


	6. Homecoming

**October 2013**

"No, Sherlock. It's just not on."

Lestrade curled his hands around his mug, which was filled with hot, sweet tea, in an attempt to bring some feeling back into his fingers. He hunched over the none-too-clean tabletop so that what little steam the beverage gave off could drift up to his face. Though he still wore his coat and scarf, he began to feel as though he might never be warm again. He supposed he was in some form of mild shock, and wished for a moment that he had a stiff drink instead of tea.

By contrast, the newly resurrected man sitting across from him in the dingy, half-deserted coffee shop seemed, if slightly impatient, utterly relaxed– far more so, Lestrade thought resentfully, than the situation called for. Sherlock sat leaning negligently back in his seat, one arm across the rear of the seat behind him, the other on the table, the fingers impatiently drumming a restless beat. His signature Belstaff coat hung open casually; his scarf was knotted loosely around his neck. Lestrade eyed the ends of the scarf and took a moment to picture himself using it to throttle the bastard. He might have tried it had he had any strength left in him whatsoever.

"Don't be dull, Lestrade. John Watson has nerves of steel."

"Well, he doesn't anymore," Lestrade growled. He winced involuntarily, thinking of John's most recent nightmare. They didn't talk much about the bad dreams – he knew John was humiliated at having his friend witness them – but Lestrade had suggested gently just that morning that, circumstances being what they were, it might not be such a bad idea for John to call his old therapist and make an appointment. He had been both relieved and worried when John had agreed without protest. "I'm serious, Sherlock…he's been through a hell of a lot, these past two years."

Sherlock's fingers stopped drumming. His face was set like stone.

"I was going to see him first," he said softly. "That is – I had wanted to make myself known to him, first." He wouldn't meet Greg's eyes.

"Well, why didn't you?" Greg asked bluntly.

"I left before I could learn from _Mycroft_," (here his voice turned slightly venomous), "where you are living now. He told me John was with you…I hadn't thought he would leave Baker Street. Well, why _would_ he?" Sherlock asked defensively in response to Lestrade's incredulous look. "It's a good location, Mycroft kept the rent up…he was _happy_ there."

"And you thought he'd be there waiting around after witnessing your suicide? Jesus, you really are an idiot," Greg said helplessly, scrubbing his hand along the short hairs at the back of his head and neck. "He wouldn't have stayed there even if all hell _hadn't b_roken loose the moment you stepped off that bloody roof. But as it was, Sherlock, it all went to shit in a hurry. The press latched on to _him_ once you were beyond their reach, and tore his reputation to shreds. And then when he got convicted…God, it was awful. For all of us, but especially for John. He was in Frankland for nearly two _bloody_ years."

"It took me two years to dismantle Moriarty's network," Sherlock said sullenly.

"And it took me that long to uncover enough evidence to clear _both_ your names and get him the hell out of that place!"

"I'm not surprised, considering the _idiocy_ of your investigative techniques," Sherlock snapped. "There was no need for you to have been about it that long…on the cab ride over I went through the file and found _seven_ inconsistencies that would have thrown enough reasonable doubt onto the evidence Moriarty had fabricated against John to clear him…his case need never have come to trial!"

That stung – badly – and Greg slammed his mug down, sloshing tea over the tabletop, and rose to his feet.

"Well, you _weren't _bloody here, were you?" he hissed. "You _or_ your bloody, arrogant sod of a brother. _I_ was all he had, and I did my best for him!"

"Obviously it wasn't enough!"

Greg felt that statement like a punch in the gut, and he sank back into his seat, palms flat on the table, and stared straight down, trying to get his breathing back under control. He felt as though a hand around his heart was squeezing it painfully. He knew full well it hadn't been enough…that _he_ hadn't been enough. He had sifted through the evidence, slowly, painstakingly, for that's what Greg Lestrade was – a dogged, determined, persistent investigator who was good at what he did, and very thorough. But he wasn't a genius, and he didn't have Sherlockian flashes of brilliance. Working alone and on his own time (because to the Yard, the case was closed, and there was no one who believed in Sherlock Holmes anymore, or in John – even Donovan, who liked John, thought of him as a good bloke who had, unfortunately, been bewitched by Sherlock), he had eventually uncovered the truth. But not before John had served twenty-one months of his ten-year sentence, and anyone could see that he would probably never be the same for the experience.

"Lestrade."

Greg looked up. Sherlock, his face pale and his eyes anxious and uncertain, was looking straight at him. "I…what I meant to say…" he trailed off, stammering a bit. Apologies came hard to Sherlock (especially when he meant them), and Lestrade could see Sherlock regretted what he had said. He could even see that Sherlock had said it because he blamed himself, at least partly, for what had happened to John.

He had explained it all to Lestrade…the need to take Moriarty down, the three snipers, the necessity of going undercover. Greg was grateful, he supposed, for his life being saved – of course he was. He could even admire the brilliance and thoroughness of the plan. It was the damned _cold-bloodedness_ of the whole thing that left a bad taste in his mouth and a sick feeling in his stomach. To lie to them all, to force John, _John_ of all people with his PTSD, to witness such a thing, and to leave them all to grieve for however long he deemed it necessary while he went gallivanting off alone around the world on a genius-hunt… And what was worse, he was completely unrepentant – Lestrade could read it in his body language. He was upset about John, yes, but as far as Sherlock Holmes was concerned, he had concocted a brilliant plan and done what was necessary to make it work, and while he probably would say it was regrettable that the people whom he called friends found it to be painful, Lestrade knew he had no real notion of the suffering he had left in his wake.

Most people would say that no one knew Sherlock Holmes as well as John Watson did, but Lestrade thought that even John didn't _quite_ realize how childlike the brilliant detective really was – nor how fragile. Sherlock was as unthinking of how his actions affected others as a boastful young boy might be, and, though he had come to care for the three people whose lives he had endeavored to save, he had no real notion of how important _he_ was to _them_. Sherlock Holmes didn't have _friends_. People didn't like him, and he didn't understand other people.

Lestrade sat, pinning Sherlock with his own version of a deductive gaze, and saw a man who was upset over the effects his actions had had, but uncomprehending of how deeply those effects ran. It occurred to Greg at that moment that he didn't know anyone in the world – including John – who felt as alone as Sherlock Holmes probably did. Greg pitied him – he truly did. If he hadn't been so hurt and angry himself, he might have pitied him more.

"I'm not taking you back to my place, Sherlock," Lestrade finally said aloud. When Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, Greg cut him off at once. "Yes, I know you could probably follow me there without my ever even seeing you, but I'm going to ask you for one thing…I know it's hard for you to trust anyone over your own intelligence, but just this once I want you to trust me and give me tonight to explain things to John. I know you probably thought he'd be delighted to see you, would shake your hand and clap you on the shoulder and shake his head at your cleverness in pulling this bloody charade off. But that's not what would happen, Sherlock. I'm not sure what _would_ happen if you tried it, to be honest. But I do know this – John's been through a cruel time, and you'd better let me act as a buffer between you on this, and break it to him carefully. So please…just give me tonight to explain things before you go dropping in on him. I'll text you after, but…just give me tonight, yeah?"

Sherlock was silent for a long moment, his lips pressed tight together. Then, curtly, he nodded once.

* * *

Removing the pan from the stove, John stirred butter and Parmesan into the rice mixture, covered it, then set it aside. This was key for a perfect risotto, his mother had told him long ago…too many people grew impatient and served it immediately, not giving the dish the time it needed to take on the extra creaminess which gives it its beautiful, signature texture. John had listened well and mastered the knack (Harry had been too impatient).

As a cook, John's skills could be described as competent and capable, but not usually very imaginative. He could brew a perfect cup of tea and grill a particularly tasty cheese-on-toast, but that was nearly the extent of it. Not even Sherlock had been able to resist John's risotto, however, and John had found his roasted vegetable version to be a good way to sneak some much-needed nutrients into the recalcitrant detective.

Even if he hadn't been much of a cook, it still felt good to be able to prepare food for himself again. Hell, it just felt good to look forward to meals that didn't include over-boiled vegetables, sponge pudding and custard. Even being able to prepare a cup of real tea that actually _tasted_ like tea and not like diesel fuel seemed nothing short of miraculous now. The food at Frankland had been nourishing enough, John supposed, but rather grim, and nothing near to Mrs. Hudson's cooking. Along with some of his things from the flat, she had brought over a lovely fish pie and a blackberry crumble that was perfectly sublime the night after John was released for a bit of a celebration dinner, and the three of them had enjoyed it immensely.

With the risotto ready to go, John glanced up at the kitchen clock. He'd expected Greg back well over an hour ago. Not in a particular rush to eat, he fixed himself a cuppa and settled down to wait for the DI, figuring his friend might like to share the risotto.

Thinking of that celebratory dinner, John figured it was a good thing they had had the food to expound upon. All three of them were ecstatic that Sherlock's and John's names had been cleared, and all three of them were positively euphoric that John had been freed (well – John was more stunned than euphoric at this point), but…no one really knew what to talk about. Every topic somehow felt taboo. To talk about the time before, with Sherlock, felt unbearable. To talk about things that happened while John was still inside felt awkward. And for John, contemplating the future felt incomprehensible – he was still having a hard time getting a grasp on the present.

Setting his mug of tea onto the small coffee table to cool. John sat back and glanced around Greg's tiny bedsit. Despite the fact that the Lestrade had told him many times that he was welcome to stay as long as he wanted, John knew he couldn't continue to hide out here much longer. Although the bedsit seemed large when compared in John's mind to his five-and-a-half square metre cell at Frankland, John knew it couldn't possibly seem that way to Greg, and now there were two people living here.

The problem was…John just didn't know what the hell he was going to do.

Harry had not stopped bothering him about coming to stay with her in her large townhouse on the outskirts of London, but John knew he wouldn't be able to bear it. He loved Harry, he worried about her, but he knew from experience that living with her was just not on. She would consistently be in his space, asking him questions he didn't feel comfortable answering, demanding he talk, "open up." He knew full well she was still drinking, and being drunk loosened her tongue in a way that was guaranteed to cause fights. And then there was the way she had let him down so badly after his sentence began, for which she still felt guilty and kept insisting on apologizing.

John just didn't want to talk about it.

Then there was dear Mrs. Hudson. Twice since his release last week she had asked him when he was coming "home," the wistfulness and eagerness in her voice making his gut twist with guilt. In many ways, he wanted to gratify her – Baker Street had been the most "at home" he'd felt since leaving the army – since ever, really. But the thought of returning there unnerved him. Mrs. Hudson thought she was being comforting when she assured him that, apart from some tidying up on her part, everything was "exactly the same." But after everything that had happened – Sherlock's arrest, their run from the law, the confrontation with Mycroft, Sherlock's suicide, and then his own arrest – a lifetime of awful experiences crammed into a twenty-four hour period – followed by the public humiliation of his trial and conviction and then two long, weary, difficult and often downright terrifying years in prison – how could everything be the same? It seemed monstrously wrong, an injustice as great as the one he himself had experienced, to have his books and Sherlock's mingling on the set of shelves in the lounge at 221b as though waiting for their owners to pick them up, for his RAMC mug to be waiting patiently in the cupboard for him to make his next cup of tea, for his dark blue duvet to be sitting ready to be pulled back in his second-storey bedroom.

Besides, it couldn't possibly be _truly_ the same. Sherlock wouldn't be there.

And that omission scared him most of all. Go back to Baker Street with everything the same, but no Sherlock? The science equipment standing idle on the kitchen table, the violin silent near the music stand in the corner amidst stacks of sheet music, Sherlock's chair empty across from his own? No sudden cries of _bored!_ erupting from the couch, no unexpected explosions, no string music at three in the morning, no slamming of the front door and pounding feet on the stairs when he was trying to nap in his chair? After twenty-one months of constant noise – cell doors slamming, shouts and swearing from the other inmates, threats and warnings from the screws, televisions and radios going all night from other pads*, Bill Wiggins's whiffling snore in the next pad over (sound proofing was nonexistent) – the thought of drifting around 221b all alone with only Sherlock's ghost for company, as though John himself were a ghost…John shivered a little involuntarily. The very thought of it made him feel desperate. Surely, then, it would be a road to madness?

Suddenly John wished he had something stronger than tea.

_Don't go there,_ he told himself firmly. After everything, he would not go the way Harry had…the way their father had.

It was tempting, though, when he started trying to envision a future. The ideal solution to the problem of living arrangements would be to get a place of his own somewhere in London, somewhere _not_ Baker Street. But how could he afford it? He had never had much money; the army had always seen to his needs. The bit he'd managed to put by from his locum work and on cases with Sherlock was diminished significantly from his time in prison, spent on phone calls and things he'd needed from the canteen. The money he'd earned on the inside when he started working in the prison infirmary last December was laughable. Would he be able to work as a doctor again? Who would hire him, even now that his name was cleared? For two years his name had been infamous. He came with a load of baggage, even more, now, than when he was first discharged from the army.

Taking a deep breath, John abruptly got up and headed back to Lestrade's kitchenette where he put the risotto back on the burner and set it on low to warm. Greg and Mrs. Hudson had both urged him to take some time and get his bearings before making any decisions. It was good advice, though he couldn't help wishing he at least had a starting point to work from. Right now he just felt lost.

So engrossed in his own thoughts was he that John was startled when he heard the door to the bedsit open. He glanced up, took in Lestrade's profile, then turned back to the range. "Good timing, Greg. I was just about to dish up…"

Then something clicked – _something's wrong_ – and he turned back to Greg again, narrowing his eyes.

Lestrade stood about five feet away, staring at him. He looked as though he had aged ten years overnight, his face nearly as grey as his hair.

To a man who has seen too much trouble in his lifetime and far more than his fair share just recently, this was not a look to make a friend feel easy. John turned to face Greg fully. "Jesus, Greg…what the hell happened?"

For an answer, Greg stepped past John, turned the burner off, put the lid back on the pan and set it aside. He then reached into the small fridge and pulled out two cans of beer. Handing one to John, he took John's arm and steered him over to the couch, then sat down in the chair opposite. John did not sit, but stood staring at him, his heart suddenly pounding. Lestrade took a deep breath and looked up at him.

"Sit down, John, lad. We need to talk."

"John, lad." Though Lestrade was a decade older and thus sometimes felt he could get away with this, John, the former officer, still didn't like it. But there was something in Greg's face that made protest impossible, and John obeyed numbly, sitting across from the DI who leaned forward to open both their beers.

And, while the forgotten risotto cooled and congealed on the back burner, John Watson sat and listened in shock and disbelief as Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade told him gently that Sherlock Holmes was not dead and never had been, and that the entire suicide scene that had taken place over two years ago at St. Bart's had, in fact, been orchestrated by Sherlock and his brother.

* * *

She could have finished the washing up sooner, but Martha Hudson found the repetitiveness of the mundane household task to be somehow soothing, and so she took her time, the radio providing a comforting white noise in the background.

White noise was all she had now, for far too long – over two years, in fact. 221 had once been a busy, noisy place, with the sound of her two "boys'" feet pounding up and down the stairs at all hours, the front door slamming, creaking floorboards in the middle of the night, shouting and laughter and yes, sometimes even small explosions and noxious smells (and once even gunshots). But she had loved every minute of it, even the frightening ones. She was like John, she supposed, or rather, he was like her – ordinary life was lovely, but sometimes it just wasn't enough. With Sherlock, something unexpected was always sure to liven things up.

Until finally he had done the most unexpected thing of all, and killed himself.

It still made her tear up to think of it. She would never, ever understand _why_ he had done it…and if she could have done something, said something, to stop him from doing it. She wished she could go back in time and tell him, up on that rooftop, that she, of all people, didn't care what anyone said about him. Even if he had had to go to prison, like poor John had, he would always have her to go and see him, and Baker Street to come home to when he got out.

It had been so hard for her, and no one quite understood, not even her next-door friend Mrs. Turner. She was a woman who had lost her family – husband and boys – in a scandalous way, and no one knew what to say to her. Her husband had been a criminal; her "boys" were not really hers. But to her, they were – the closest thing to children she had or ever would have. So when Mycroft had offered to keep 221b to store Sherlock's and John's things, she had agreed, preferring the silence of the house to someone new coming in.

She just wished John would come home. She had been so happy when he was released, but so disappointed that he hadn't returned to Baker Street at once. But she would be patient and continue to hope…she wanted him _home_, where she could cook for him and hear his feet moving about overhead and where she could keep an eye on him so she didn't have to worry so much.

She heard the front door open, and stilled.

Turning down the volume on the radio (the announcer was nattering on about a new anti-terrorism bill), Mrs. Hudson tightened her grip round the handle of the frying pan she had just finished drying and moved stealthily toward the door of 221a. Could it be John? Surely he would have called first? But it couldn't be…he hadn't yet taken back his key. Greg definitely would have called, she knew – he was very conscientious about such things.

She saw a silhouette appear behind the frosted glass of her front door – a familiar, impossible silhouette – and froze in place, eyes wide, frying pan lifted, heart pounding.

And then, without knocking, of course (_when has he ever bloody knocked_?) Sherlock pushed the door open and stood looking at her.

Mrs. Hudson screamed.

Then she hit him over the head with the frying pan.

Then she threw herself into his arms and wept against his breast as he stroked her hair, a laugh rumbling deep in his chest.

* * *

*_pad_ – UK slang term for a prison cell.


	7. First Night

**January 2012**

"_The first night's the toughest, no doubt about it…when they put you in that cell, when those bars slam home, that's when you know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it."_

–Ellis Redding, from _The Shawshank Redemption_

* * *

John first met Bill Wiggins in the sweatbox* on the way to Frankland. There were about ten others prisoners in the vehicle that had been picked up from various courts, and Wiggins happened to be in the cramped cell next to his. Some of the other men were chatting casually to one another in a show of bravado. John sat straight and silent and still, too numb even to register Wiggins the first time the lad rapped on the partition between their cells.

"You the doc, an't you?"

John had seen the speaker board, a scrawny twenty-something in a battered, hooded sweatshirt. A wispy, ginger beard did not disguise the unmistakable waxy pallor of a habitual drug user. What made him stand out to John, though, were his quick, shrewd, intelligent eyes that darted here and there as he moved about. "Who wants to know?" John asked.

"I'm Bill, Bill Wiggins. Seen you around on the streets when you was with your detective. 'E used to give me money now and again for findin' things out for him."

John closed his eyes. The reference to Sherlock pierced his heart like a dart tossed by a careless child. Instead of responding, he began rummaging through the small canvas bag that Mrs. Hudson had packed for him as well as his chained wrists would allow.

The bag contained all the things John had asked Mrs. Hudson to put in: toiletries from his bathroom at 221b, the lidocaine plasters he used when his arm and shoulder were acting up, a couple of books and medical journals from his bedside table, his watch, and the trainers he used for running. In addition to these, he saw that she had also included some of her own home-baked shortbread, a packet of biscuits and another of tea, and a small box containing writing paper and envelopes, stamps, six pens and two pencils. John was puzzled when he came across a yellow envelope with Lestrade's writing on the front – _For emergencies_. The flap was tucked in rather than sealed; when John opened it, he found it contained £100 in cash.

Staring at these unexpected gifts, John felt his eyes burn and a lump begin to form in his throat. He quickly closed the bag and looked away from it, taking slow, deep breaths.

After a moment, the voice in the next cell piped up again. "I know he wasn't no fraud, your detective bloke…all of us on the street, we all knew it."

John sat for a moment, absorbing this statement. Finally, he spoke just loud enough to be heard over the motor.

"I'm John."

"I'll call you 'Doc,'" the voice called back cheerfully. "You can call me 'Wiggy.'"

For the first time in days, John managed a smile. It was small and fleeting, but it was genuine.

* * *

The hours following his arrival at Frankland were a blur.

They were taken from the sweatbox one at a time to the induction wing. Wiggins went before John. As the younger man stood to exit his cell, he murmured in a low voice, quickly, so only John could hear him.

"Listen, Doc…this is my third time in the nick** for a drugs offense, yeah? So listen to me and until we meet up again make sure you hang onto whatcha got and don't show any weakness, yeah?"

"Move," the prison officer said sharply before John could respond. Then Wiggins was gone.

In many ways, John later ruefully reflected, the prison's regimental induction process wasn't that much different from the military's – at least, from what he could remember. The prison receptions wing was a long, pale blue corridor with a series of heavy metal doors along two landings, and it seemed to John that he visited every holding room it housed, with long intervals of waiting between each one.

In the reception room they relieved John of his canvas bag, removed his wrist restraints, fingerprinted him and took his picture. He was then told to sit while one prison officer began taking down his personal information and another began going through and logging the contents of his bag.

It was all very routine and businesslike; the first prison officer asked the questions in the toneless manner of a person who has asked the same questions thousands of times before, filling out the forms without meeting John's eyes. In a sudden, unexpected return of his own gallows humor, John had a sudden urge to give him his army rank and serial number, too, but then decided being snarky might not be the right foot to start on. So instead he answered readily and politely, keeping an eye on the man going through his things in the meanwhile with the uneasiness of having his personal property handled without permission.

When the forms were filled out, John turned to find the his things divided into three separate piles.

"The toiletries, stationary, writing tools and reading materials are fine; you'll get those back when you're assigned your cell," the officer said briskly, indicating the first pile. The food you can't have – you eat what we give you."

John watched regretfully as the baked goods and tea were set aside. That left one last pile – this one containing his trainers, watch, lidocaine plasters, and the envelope with money from Lestrade, as well as the bag itself.

"The meds we'll give to the infirmary; you'll let someone know when you need them and they'll dole 'em out. The money we hang onto and dole out to you for the canteen," the officer said, indicating the envelope. "Cells are left unlocked when you're not in 'em, so it'll just get stolen if you keep it there. Is your watch waterproof?"

"Yes."

"Then you have a choice – wear it 24-7, including in the shower, or leave it to be stored with the rest of your property. Up to you."

John thought of Wiggins telling him to hang onto whatever he could. "I'll keep it," he said.

The officer nodded. "You'll get it back later, then. The bag will be logged and stored. You have a choice with the shoes…you can have them stored as is and we'll issue you a pair of plimsolls with Velcro fastenings, or you can keep these after we've taken the laces out and have someone from outside bring you an approved pair later."

John thought quickly. It would be better to have shoes that could actually be done up, but these were _his_, and he was going to have to make do with enough prison-issued items as it was. "I'll keep them."

"Right then." The officer quickly removed the laces from John's trainers, set them on top of the canvas bag, and put the shoes with the items that were to be returned to John later. He then motioned another officer over. "This one's ready to be searched."

As the officer led him out of the room, John glanced over his shoulder in time to see the reception staff sampling Mrs. Hudson's good shortbread.

He supposed it was better than just having them throw it away.

* * *

"Strip," the officer in the next holding room ordered. "Everything off, now."

He said it with such calm, professional authority that John could feel his military training kicking in, forcing him to obey without hesitation. He'd known this part was coming, anyway.

There were two of them, both wearing gloves, one watching while the other patted John down. It was quick, impersonal and noninvasive, no more unpleasant in the process than any cursory medical exam might be, but somehow worse for the utter lack of human interest…John felt more like a dog at a Kennel Club show being checked for potential faults than a person. When it was over, the first officer nodded to the second, who handed John a folded pile of clothes: a dull gray tracksuit, blue t-shirt, socks and underwear. He also gave him a towel and a bar of soap and directed John's attention to a shower cubicle at the other end of the room.

"Take a shower, then you can get dressed…leave the upper things off, though, you see the doc next," the second officer told him. He took John's neatly folded clothes and set them aside. "These will be put into storage for you." John couldn't help casting a wistful look at his black haversack. In his own way, he was as attached to it as Sherlock had been to his Belstaff, though in a less ostentatious way.

John showered quickly, toweled himself dry, and pulled on the underpants, socks and track bottoms. Carrying the t-shirt and sweatshirt, he followed the officer in his sock feet along the corridor to a small examining room. A gray-haired man in a white lab coat motioned to the examining table. "Have a seat." The officer who had escorted John waited just inside the door, watching. John noticed he had a small baton and a can of pepper spray on his belt.

The prison doctor took John's height and weight and peered into his ears, his eyes, and down his throat. He listened to John's heart and lungs, palpitated his abdomen, and took his temperature, stopping often to write down his findings. He also questioned John as to his general health. Taking note of the scars on John's body from his injury in Afghanistan – the scar from the entry wound over his shoulder blade on his back and the even larger and more ragged scar let by the exit would sprawled over the clavicle in front, as well as the scar from the chest tube – he raised his eyebrows and said, "Gunshot wound? That doesn't look like it came from a handgun."

"Sniper rifle."

The doctor studied him. "Ex-military?"

John nodded, a shadow crossing his dark blue eyes. He hated admitting to his military service now because he loathed the thought that his new status as a convicted criminal might bring dishonor to his former comrades. Having the press refer to him as "bachelor John Watson" before Sherlock's suicide had been irritating; his post-arrest tabloid nickname of "disgraced ex-soldier John Watson" was exceedingly painful to him.

"Any lingering effects?" the doctor questioned.

John shook away the thoughts of what his old army mates must think of him now and gave the doctor a brief clinical description of his injury, what treatment he had received, and what medications he occasionally took now for residual pain and episodic flare-ups from the resultant nerve damage.

The doctor's eyebrows raised. "Medical man, are you?"

"I was an army trauma surgeon, then a GP," John replied quietly.

The doctor regarded him thoughtfully for a moment before returning his attention to John's file. Had that been a shade of interest, even respect, in his eyes?

"Says here you've been treated for PTSD. Any medication for that?"

"Not for over a year now. I was initially on tricyclic antidepressants, first imipramine, later desipramine."

"Any suicidal tendencies?"

For a brief moment, the thought of his Sig Sauer P226R flashed through John's mind. He wondered if it was still safely hidden in his closet at 221b, or if the police had routed it out during their search. If they had, Lestrade hadn't mentioned it.

"No."

The doctor made a note of that, then briskly closed the file. "Right. I'm authorized to prescribe medications for you if you're having pain or feel the need for your anti-anxiety meds to be restarted, so you'll let me know, all right, Doctor…" He glanced in the file again. "Watson?" And he held his hand out for John to shake it.

Stunned by this professional courtesy, John hesitated before slowly taking the offered hand. "I will, thanks, Doctor…?" he hesitated in turn, eyebrows raised, questioning.

"Bell. Joseph Bell." He released John's hand and looked to the officer. "We're finished here." He looked at John again, and for a moment it seemed he wanted to say something more, but in the end he just told them to send along the next new inmate.

* * *

Fully dressed once again in his new prison garb (though still in his stocking feet), John stood before the table in the final holding room while they doled out his prison kit to him: a plate, bowl, cup and eating utensils (all made from plastic) along with a packet of cereal, UHT milk, teabags and sugar packets for his breakfast in the morning, a towel, and an armful of scratchy bedding. He was also given a PIN code which he was told was for £1 credit on the phones on the wings, two postage-paid envelopes with bland, prison-issue paper, and his new prison ID card, already stamped with his photo and the number SJ1311. His approved items (including his watch and shoes, now free of their laces) were returned to him, along with two gray jumpers, a pair of gray trousers, and five pairs of prison socks and underwear.

"Do you smoke?" the issuing reception clerk asked.

"No."

"Then that's everything except for your Prisons Handbook." She set the booklet on top of John's bundle and waved him away.

It was a lot to carry; John had a hard time keeping the tall pile steady as they moved him into the hallway to line up with the other new prisoners. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Wiggins swiftly bundling his kit into the bed sheets and followed suit, earning an approving grin from the younger man as he did so.

A rather unpleasant-looking tall officer with black hair and narrow eyes approached the prisoner at the head of the line, his baton in his hand. "This way." He motioned along the corridor and, flanked by other screws armed with batons, the new inmates moved onto the main wing.

There was a lot of noise here – too much noise. The high ceiling caught the loud voices of the dozens of inmates lining the four landings and threw them back again, doubling their shouts of "All right there, mate? Like your new home? Nice, innit?" John looked up at the faces, some malicious, some amused, a few sympathetic, all trying to get a read on the "new boys." Some of the other first-timers were clearly intimidated, but John had seen a lot during his years in the army and during his time with Sherlock, and he recognized this for what it was…hazing, and an attempt to reinforce an established pecking order. To show weakness now could prove dangerous, so John kept his features set in the stoic mask that had always annoyed Harry.

The induction orderly put him in a single pad next door to Bill Wiggins's. Before he left, the orderly handed John a sandwich wrapped in plastic. "It's past mealtime, so this is to tide you over. You should already have your breakfast in your kit." Without waiting for an answer, he left the cell.

There was a harsh sound of steel-on-steel as the door slammed shut and locked behind him – a very final sort of sound that did little to muffle the noise from the landing.

John shivered a little. The cell was rather cold – particularly to a man whose internal thermostat had never really adjusted back to England's climate after his time in the Middle East. A hot water pipe running from wall-to-wall at the far end of the cell seemed to be the only source of heat.

He stood just by the door, belongings in his arms, and took stock of the tiny cell.

The place smelled strongly of disinfectant. Both the walls and the furniture had been painted a dull off-white. A narrow metal bunk was bolted to the wall on the left side of the cell. The mattress had been cleaned, but John could see faint stains on it. On the far wall at the bed's head was a fair-sized cupboard, its door open slightly to reveal a short clothes bar with a few welded hangers and a lower shelf. Below the door were two large drawers and a shelf on the bottom for shoes.

On the wall to his right, adjacent to the bed, was a small wooden desk with a single drawer. It, too, was bolted to the wall. Attached to the wall above it was a small open cupboard with four shelves. On the same wall to the right of the desk was a small sink with a towel bar. It had a small, round metal mirror above it. Facing the sink, on the same wall as the door to the cell, the toilet was in a separate cubicle. It had neither a seat nor a door.

Squarely opposite the cell door was the single, tiny window with frosted glass. John set his things down on the bunk and went to it. He knew it would have bars on the outside, of course, but he was hoping he would be able to open it for a breath of fresh air. He could – by about six inches.

When he looked through it, he found it faced a brick wall.

John swallowed hard and looked down, trying to steady his breathing, which had quickened with his heart rate. On the windowsill, someone had scratched the words, "Arrive a man, leave an animal."

He closed his eyes to shut the sight of it out and clenched his left hand in an effort to stop the involuntary twitch that had begun. He wanted to do what he usually did when this happened – shove that hand into his pocket to hide it – but his tracksuit had no pockets.

John eased himself down to the floor and turned so he was sitting with his back to the wall, facing the door to his cell – his new home, the place where, he suddenly understood, he was to spend most of the next ten years of his life.

It wasn't exactly a dungeon…he'd slept in poorer places than this, particularly when he was in the army. But that had been for something. This was…this was _nothing_.

He thought he'd known what nothing was.

"Nothing happens to me," he'd told Ella Thompson, his therapist. After a vivid, colorful sojourn in medical school and then the military, he thought his life was over, just like the two careers that had been stolen from him the day an insurgent's bullet had shattered his health. But the dreary bedsit he had felt condemned to by the MoD had not been as bleak as this room and, more importantly, the door had not been locked.

John remembered those early days back in London, limping restlessly around the city, killing time between physical therapy and psychotherapy appointments, thinking, thinking, thinking. He hadn't known what he would do…hadn't known what he _wanted_ to do now that the life he'd forged for himself – a life of command and competence, a life of purpose and service that had suited him well and made him feel _real_ and _alive_ – had been snatched from him. Then came Sherlock.

_Sherlock._

John lowered his forehead to his knees and threaded his fingers in his short blond hair. In the six months since Sherlock's death, he had done everything he could to avoid thinking of his flat mate – his best friend, for so he had become. Brilliant, frustrating, maddening, amazing, exasperating Sherlock. John had had a lot of "mates," but few real friends. Many might not know the difference, but John did, and it mattered to him. His friendship was a gift John gave with extreme caution, and many were puzzled by his choice of recipients – the morose and anti-social James Sholto, his former commanding officer; the eccentric and sharp-tongued Artie Doyle, his mentor at Bart's…and, of course, the consulting detective and self-proclaimed sociopath Sherlock Holmes.

John considered Sherlock his best friend not because Sherlock had always acted like one, but because he gave John what he most needed – a purpose – and because Sherlock was like another part of himself – the better, truer part.

Sherlock had brought him back to life.

John knew he was no Sherlock, but he had thought – hoped – he was of _some_ small use to the man. He could help him, shepherd him, keep him safe and healthy, and direct him on the road to becoming great.

No. Sherlock was already _great_. But John could help him to become, as Greg had once said, _good_.

But in the end, John had failed to keep Sherlock safe. He had abandoned him at the crucial moment, allowed himself to be lured away, leaving Sherlock at the mercy of Moriarty, who had somehow caused him to commit suicide.

Head still against his knees, John squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe he deserved to be here. The crime he _had_ committed was, after all, far greater than the one of which he had been accused.

He wished, though, that he had died with Sherlock. Or better still, died instead of him.

John did not move again that night. He was still in the same position two hours later when a prison officer opened the flap in his cell door to look in at him during the nightly head count, and he was still in that position an hour after that when the lights went out, leaving him in near-total darkness.

* * *

*_sweatbox_: an armored van used for transporting prisoners.

**_nick_: slang term for a prison.


	8. First Reactions

**October 2013**

"_So it was…that at two o'clock to-day I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned."_

–Sherlock Holmes, from _The Adventure of the Empty House_

Sherlock had to endure many more cuffs and kisses from Mrs. Hudson (as well as two plates of leftover stew and a slice of cake from her fridge, all of which he was happy to get) before she finally allowed him to ascend the stairs to 221b. By then, it was two o'clock in the morning.

Sherlock paused on the landing for a moment, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.

_Home._

The flat was exactly the way he remembered it – almost. Actually, it was more the way it had been when he and John had returned from their trip to Dartmoor after the Baskerville case…was, in fact, the cleanest and the tidiest it had been since Sherlock had first moved in. Per Mycroft's instructions, Mrs. Hudson had not boxed anything up. But it was immediately apparent to Sherlock that she had been in the flat a great deal after Sherlock and John had left it, both immediately following their departure and since.

Sherlock visited the kitchen. Every surface had been vigorously scrubbed, and the oven and the stovetop were gleaming. The dishes had been washed and put away, the chairs tucked tidily under the table, the floor was spotless. His science equipment was still on the table (though neatly arranged), the kettle was still on the countertop, John's favorite RAMC mug was still sitting beside it as though waiting for John to prepare tea. In fact, the only sign that the place was not currently occupied was the fact that the food cupboards were bare and the refrigerator had been emptied out, cleaned, and unplugged.

The same could be said of the lounge – Sherlock's laptop and papers were lined up neatly on the desk, the books were carefully sorted on the shelves, the bison skull was still on the wall and the human skull on the mantel, his violin was settled reverently in its case by the music stand on which his sheet music was carefully stacked, and one of John's jumpers was hanging neatly on the coat rack. Sherlock mounted the stairs to John's second-storey bedroom and peered in. It was the same here as it had been in Sherlock's own bedroom: John's bed was neatly made, his desk tidied, and his clothes were laundered and put away in the small closet and bureau in an orderly fashion.

Sherlock went back downstairs. He stood in the middle of the lounge, looking around, processing information, deducing. A faint but lingering scent of disinfectant hung about the kitchen and bathroom. Lines in the rug from told of a recent hoovering. There was a faint layer of dust on the furniture, but not two year's worth. It appeared that Mrs. Hudson had cleaned the place thoroughly over a period of weeks or even months after Sherlock and John had left it, and that she still came in once a week or so to tidy the place.

Sherlock stood still for a moment, thinking of that. During his time away, he had always pictured Baker Street (whenever he had allowed himself to think of it at all) as being exactly the same: his home, his haven, the place to which he would thankfully, happily return when his work dismantling Moriarty's empire was done. It seemed he had his wish. But now it occurred to him how easily that might not have been the case, and it made him feel queerly sad to think of Mrs. "Not-Your-Housekeeper-Dear" Hudson keeping the place as neat and tidy as though he and John would return to it at any time – when it fact, as far as she had known, Sherlock was dead and John had been sentenced to a decade in prison. Mrs. Hudson, he realized, had not been able to move on. And John…

_John. Prison._

Huffing out a breath, Sherlock did what he had been longing to do for months – years, actually – and sank back into his old leather armchair. He looked across at John's chair, the throw still slung casually over the back and the Union Jack pillow tucked into a corner. The chair was…disturbingly empty. The flat felt too quiet.

_Ridiculous…if John were here, he would be asleep in his room, most likely…there would be no more noise than there is now, at this moment._

But he knew that wasn't quite true…the quietude around him was deeper, emptier than it would have been had John been in his upstairs bedroom.

Sherlock had done difficult things, faced many dangers, endured many hardships, but it was a thought that he had held onto – that Baker Street would stay the same. On the surface, it appeared to have done just that…but the most important part, he realized, was missing.

Mycroft had only been half-right when he thought his brother had stopped thinking of his friends. It was true that Sherlock didn't think of them very often, but that was not because he had forgotten them or didn't care – it was because he deliberately locked them away in his mind palace so that thoughts of them would not distract him from his task. And he did let them out sometimes before he slept, just briefly, to remind himself that he had a life to return to after his "holiday" was over…a Life and a Home.

If one had asked him, Sherlock Holmes would have said he was not a sentimental man, that he did not become attached to people. When he and Mycroft had concocted their plan to take down Moriarty, he had had no trouble leaving John out of the details. He had not wanted to fake his death, but he had been prepared to do so and, yes, even a little excited by the prospect. Before Reichenbach, Sherlock would have said he was _fond_ of John, _fond_ of Mrs. Hudson…even somewhat _fond_ of Lestrade. Like a child, he did not understand how attached he had become to them; they just _were_ – constants in his life that he found useful and not as irritating or dull as most people.

Of all the people Sherlock had ever known (including his own parents), John was the person he felt…_easiest_ with. Never before had he had someone to laugh with, joke with, play board games with. It had all seemed so…comfortingly _ordinary_, which was something Sherlock knew he had never been. He had assumed it was because _John_ was ordinary; it took him awhile to realize it was because John _wasn't_ ordinary at all.

It must be owned that at first Sherlock did not miss John. He did not expect to be gone long, and this adventure felt no different than any other when he had taken off on his own and left John behind. Indeed, it was oddly liberating not to have John pulling him back, cautioning him to be sensible, reproving him for being rude, ordering him to eat, urging him to sleep, scolding him for smoking. At first, Sherlock felt much the way a teenaged boy might feel with his parents away, leaving him to his own devices.

It didn't take long, however, before Sherlock began to feel something he had not felt since John came along, a feeling he had been unable to define until life with John had opened his eyes to it: loneliness.

Sherlock had not realized how dependent he had grown upon John. He had once called John his "conductor of light;" it was truer than he realized – John was a prism that helped to bend the stream of information that flooded Sherlock's keen senses into a cohesive picture; he was water to Sherlock's fire, and solid earth under his restless, anxious feet. More than once during those two long years Sherlock regretted not bringing John with him…he suspected he could have finished the job in half the time, had John only been there to help him _think_. He thought better when John was around.

As it was, though, John _did_ help him – the John in his mind palace, at any rate. Just as Sherlock had talked to John in the flat even when John was away, so he talked to him in his head continually while on his travels. John had believed this habit of Sherlock's meant that Sherlock was careless of John's presence. John underestimated his own importance, for the real reason Sherlock did it was because he had come to rely on John so completely.

Sherlock leaned back in his chair. He had been taken aback when Lestrade hugged him, and taken aback by Mrs. Hudson's tears (not to mention her anger, he thought, ruefully rubbing the bump on his head). He had thought they would miss him, but had been surprised at the…intensity, the _vehemence_ of their feelings. Did that mean _John_ might have been more affected by his "suicide" than Sherlock had anticipated, too?

Sherlock deduced that John would likely react to his return in one of three ways. Reaction number one: he would be stunned, then delighted, and amazed at Sherlock's cleverness at he had so often been in the past. This was the reaction Sherlock was hoping for, but he regretfully calculated the odds as being too optimistic.

Reaction number two: John would be angry at having been deceived and left behind again and would blow up at him – would possibly even hit him. Sherlock sighed a little, figuring this would be John's most likely reaction. He wasn't looking forward to it, but he could bear it if it would help John get past his upset – when John lost his temper, he tended to lose it all the way, but the lovely thing was that once the explosion was past he settled back to his affable self fairly quickly. A black eye was not pleasant, Sherlock reflected, but would be well worth it if aided in getting things back to normal in a hurry.

Then there was the third possible reaction. Sherlock didn't think it was likely, but…_prison_. John had spent the past two years in _prison_. That might add in some previously unanticipated factors. Anger at Mycroft rising to the surface again, Sherlock reopened the file on his lap. From the time John was arrested shortly after Sherlock's leap from the roof of St. Bartholomew's to his conviction, the files were very detailed; from the time he was transported to Frankland to his release, however, there was distressingly little information. John had gone into the prison in late January of 2012, had begun working in the prison infirmary as an assistant to the prison doctor Joseph Bell in December of that same year. Sherlock frowned. The report said that mostly John had been a quiet, well-behaved prisoner, and Bell has spoken glowingly of him. There had been a couple of short stints in solitary for fighting, and one very long stint for striking a prison officer, but the report did not go into detail. There was nothing to explain the scar on his face or the haunted, half-dead look in his eyes…

Sherlock dropped the file on the coffee table and tilted his head back. He could feel something dark and terrible building in his chest. It seemed Mycroft had abandoned John to the "tender" mercies of the prison system, assuming he would be well cared for, assuming that he would be safe and protected. Mycroft, a believer in the system, apparently had not thought of what could happen to John, imprisoned in a high-security facility populated with many of society's most violent men, some of whom Sherlock himself would have put there. Mycroft hadn't thought of the potential for corrupt guards, old enemies, former compatriots of Moriarty, or gangs. And Mycroft wouldn't have thought of John's lingering PTSD symptoms of clinical depression exacerbated by boredom or–

Sherlock started suddenly. He realized he had been sitting in his armchair as of old, fingers steepled before his lips, face tilted slightly to the ceiling. He pulled out his phone – one text from Mycroft, which he deleted unopened. That was all. It was now after four in the morning. Why hadn't Lestrade texted?

Sherlock fired off a text of his own, not caring if the DI had gone to bed.

_Well? You said you would text when you spoke with John. –SH_

The reply was immediate, showing that Lestrade was indeed still awake.

_It's been a long night. Where are you? –GL_

_Honestly, Detective Inspector. Baker Street, obviously. –SH_

_Did you just show up at 221 without any warning?! –GL_

_I came home; what of it? –SH_

_You colossal prick! If I'd had any idea…is Mrs. H all right? –GL_

_Why wouldn't be? She was happy to see me. Eventually. –SH_

_Son of a bitch. I'll talk to her tomorrow. You're really lucky, Sherlock; you could have given her a heart attack. She's not all that young anymore. –GL_

_She's made of sterner stuff than people give her credit for being. –SH_

_She's tough, I'll grant you that. But I think you're minimizing the effect your little stunt had on people, and these years have been hard. You expect too much, Sherlock. –GL_

_She's fine, and I don't expect anything. That's not what I'm texting about, anyway. –SH_

He waited, but Lestrade didn't reply. Impatiently, Sherlock typed_, So? –SH_

_So what? –GL_

_You KNOW what. Did you talk to him? –SH_

_Yes, I talked to him. Let's talk about it tomorrow, yeah? Or later today, rather. I'll come by. I need to square things with Mrs. H, anyway; she's probably going to have a go at me for not warning her you were coming. –GL_

Sherlock huffed impatiently. Lestrade was clearly avoiding the question.

_Is John coming with you? –SH_

There was a long pause. Then,

_No. _

Sherlock stared at the word for a moment, but there was no follow-up. Finally he texted back, the bland, on-screen words vibrating with his impatience.

_Well, why not? –SH_

_Did you explain everything to him? –SH_

_Yes. –GL_

_Well, what happened? –SH_

A longer pause this time.

_He shut down on me, Sherlock. –GL_

Sherlock stared at those six words for several long moments. A tendril of dread uncurled in his stomach, slowly.

_What do you mean? –SH_

Stupid, really…he _knew_ what it meant when John shut down. It was rare – so rare that it was the third possible reaction that he had refused to entertain – and frightening when it happened. John was always, always _there_ for Sherlock, real and present, even when he lost his temper…except when he shut down. Then he was there for no one; it was as though a glass tube descended from the sky and encircled him, cutting him off, making him unreachable to everyone, even Sherlock.

_I'm sorry, Sherlock. He says he doesn't want to see you right now. –GL_

_You can't blame him – he's been through a lot and this is a lot to take in. I had a hard job even making him believe you're alive. Hell, I'm having a hard time believing it myself, and I actually saw you, touched you. –GL_

_Give him some time. I'm sure he'll want to see you, talk to you at some point. –GL_

_Sherlock? –GL_

_I'll come by tomorrow. –GL_

* * *

John was curled on this side on the sofa in Greg's bedsit, facing the back. Greg was in his bed across the room. John knew Greg wasn't asleep, but John pretended he was so that Greg wouldn't try to make him talk anymore. They'd talked for hours, and John needed a break, some time to get his swirling thoughts in some kind of order. He just needed some time to bloody _think_.

John had been a career soldier. He had lost friends before.

This was the first time one of them came back from the dead.

_Alive. Sherlock is alive._

Not dead.

John didn't know how to feel. A myriad of emotions kept cycling through him, faster and faster, and he couldn't come to rest on one before another shoved it aside and took its place.

Sherlock was _alive_. Surely that was something wondrous, something to rejoice over? How many times had he lain awake in his cell bunk at night and wished Sherlock would just stop being dead? Well, he had got his wish…somehow, amazingly, miraculously, unbelievably, he had got his wish. He should feel euphoric.

Mostly, though, he felt betrayed.

John had listened, unbelieving, as Lestrade had related to him how Sherlock and Mycroft had planned the whole thing – everyone on the street that day, from the bicyclist who had knocked John down to the woman who had comforted him after he had felt Sherlock's nonexistent pulse – had been a plant. Apparently, the whole charade had been played for John and some sniper. None of it had been real – not the medical personnel who ran out of the hospital, not Sherlock's shaking, tearful voice on the phone.

John felt something burning hot rise in his throat, and squeezed his eyes tight shut and forced it down so that Greg would not hear him and get up.

How could Sherlock _do_ that to him? He clenched his fists and tried to breathe through his nose. John had had nightmares about that day for…hell, who was he kidding? He'd last dreamed of it the night before.

Sherlock had told Lestrade that he'd _had_ to jump – assassins had been preparing to shoot John, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade if he didn't.

But…couldn't Sherlock have got word to him, somehow? Even if John had still had to go to prison, the thought that Sherlock was alive somewhere, working towards setting things right, that John might even be _helping_ by taking the fall for Sherlock's "crimes" – it would have been easier, somehow, given him courage to endure. He thought of the endless days of bleak despair, the stifling fear and nameless dread…he reached up and felt the raised ridge on his face and thought about the scars Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade did _not_ know about because they were hidden under his clothes and he never told them…what had all that been _for_?

Sherlock hadn't known what happened to John, Greg said. But Molly had, and so had Mycroft…Mycroft had let him be convicted. Mycroft had let him go to prison and _left_ him there for _two bloody years_!

John suddenly couldn't stand it anymore and scrambled to his feet, breathing hard. Greg sat up, switching on the light. His eyes were exhausted and alarmed.

"John. What–?"

"I need to walk for awhile." John, who had not bothered undressing apart from removing his jumper, now pulled the garment over his head and reached for his trainers.

Greg sat up. "I'll go with you."

"_No_. I mean…no, Greg, thanks. I appreciate it, but I need to be on my own for a bit." John was reaching for his old haversack, sliding his arms into it.

Lestrade watched him anxiously. "You sure you'll…be OK?"

Three weeks ago, John had been in prison with no real hope of being released for years. Five days ago, after a dizzying whirlwind of new evidence and appeals, he had been exonerated and set free. Since that day, he had not gone out on his own. He claimed he didn't want to be hounded by the press, but Greg thought there was more to it than that – he suspected that, after two years of imprisonment, John was uneasy about being outside. Now, Greg hated the idea of letting him go alone, but didn't want to say so (he knew John wouldn't appreciate it, anyway). For one brief moment, he thought of letting John go and following him, but then clamped a lid down on that idea – enough people had been making decisions for John Watson in recent years.

"All right, John lad. You go walk it off, but make sure your phone is charged, and take the key I made for you, yeah?"

"Got 'em both right here." John held up both items in confirmation before returning them to his pockets. He looked gratefully at Lestrade. "Thanks, Greg."

Lestrade knew he didn't just mean for the key.

At the door, John paused and looked back.

"Greg…there's one thing."

Lestrade sat up. "Yeah?"

"Don't call me 'John lad,' will you? You're not that that bloody old!" He managed a small smile as he pulled the door shut, locking it behind him.

Greg grinned, and shook his head admiringly. You could knock John Watson down, but, God love him, he kept getting back up.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I'm going out of town for a few days, so there won't be a Friday update this week. The next one will probably be a week from today.


	9. Heartsick

_**Author's Note: **Here's the latest chapter a bit early! My apologies if it seems a bit slow; the next three chapters are going to be rather intense, so that will, I hope, make up for it. This was necessary, though; trust me._

_Many, many, many thanks to the world's most awesome Brit-picker, hajimebassaidai, without whom this chapter would likely have been far less authentic than it already is. :-)_

**March 2012**

The sky was unusually clear, a crisp, dazzling blue. The sun was high, hot and bright. John knew it would not take long for it to bleach his hair to near white. He leaned back in the boat, closed his eyes and let the sun's rays wrap him in warmth. The heat made him feel sleepy and, turning his face to the sun and balancing his fishing rod against his bluejeaned thigh, he sighed in deep contentment, allowing his right hand to fall relaxed over the side of the boat so his fingers could trail through the loch's icy water.

Eschewing his uneasy, dysfunctional home for a fortnight to visit his beloved maternal grandfather in Scotland was the high point of John's summer holidays. Harry had balked at joining her younger brother on these trips ever since she turned fifteen, declaring that two weeks of fishing and walking in the Highlands with an old man to be dull beyond measure; thus, John got to have Granddad all to himself, which suited them both just fine. A retired doctor, Hamish McLean still lived in the small town where he had grown up, a place that held little appeal for Harry but which afforded John all manner of opportunities for boyish adventures.

Granddad was never drunk or rough, never shouted at John or hit him. A smallish, strong, compact man with deep blue eyes, he never tired of talking with his young grandson and patiently teaching him things. As astonishingly alike in temperament as they were in looks, they suited one another. John savoured every day they were together, whether they were spent on long walking journeys accompanied by Granddad's small, black-and-white collie Jess, playing checkers in the old-fashioned kitchen, reading by the coal stove in the sitting room, or fishing in the loch.

It usually wasn't this hot, though. Eyes still closed, John frowned slightly.

"Eyes open now, laddie," Granddad said.

Warm. No, not warm – hot. So, so hot.

"John? Come on now, open your eyes for me."

_In a minute, Granddad_, John wanted to say, but he found he barely had the energy to answer. His tongue felt strangely thick and his throat hurt. Then two gnarled fingers gave his cheek a couple of strong taps, not rough, but firm enough to let him know the owner of this hand would not be ignored.

"Come, laddie, look at me."

After a brief struggle, John finally managed to open his eyes. The lively eyes looking concernedly into his own were a bright, light blue, not dark, and the chiseled, hawk-like features of the regal, white-haired man leaning over him were not those of his Granddad. A name slowly surfaced in John's sluggish mind: Bell. Joseph Bell. John raised his eyes to see a younger man standing just behind the doctor, hanging over his shoulder, a dark-haired man with an uneasy, worried expression on his face. He was wearing a uniform – black trousers, white shirt with patches on the shoulders, tie, hat…a prison officer's uniform?

John turned his head to the side and saw the small, battered, nondescript desk barely an arm's reach away. On the desk's surface were some of his own books and journals, a tiny kettle, and the writing paper and pens that Mrs. Hudson had given to him when John had first come to the…

_Prison_. He was in prison. Granddad was dead and Sherlock was dead and Baker Street was not as far away as Scotland, but both places might as well be light years away because John was trapped, caught, a prisoner. The last vestiges of his dream drifted away and the heavy, black weight of despair that he had been carrying since he'd arrived here six weeks ago settled anew in his chest, cutting short his already struggling breath. John wearily closed his eyes again.

He flinched a little when he felt something cool slide into his ear. He heard a sharp click – a thermometer?

"Thirty-nine point seven," he heard the gruff Scottish voice (_like Granddad's,_ he thought blearily) say over his head. It sounded cross. "Why the devil didn't you call me sooner?"

A second voice, defensive, nervous: "I didn't bloody know! Nobody did, he never complained or said anything!"

A cool hand came to rest on the back of John's neck. "D'you think you can sit up, laddie?"

Not bothering to open his eyes, John shook his head. A darkness began creeping into the edges of his vision, and he turned inwardly towards it, gladly. Distantly he heard the Scottish voice again ("…healthcare centre…can't walk…need a trolley…") and he thought, bitterly, _Why bother? My life is over…just bloody leave me _be_, why don't you._

John let himself sink into the comforting darkness, to a place with no bars or locks.

Had it been up to him, he would never have surfaced again.

* * *

But it wasn't up to him.

John woke a little at a time. He felt exhausted, achy, thirsty, and in desperate need of a toothbrush, but his head was clear and he was no longer burning. He also felt more comfortable than his hard, narrow bunk should have allowed him to feel and, curious, he opened his eyes. He realized at once that he must be in the prison healthcare centre – specifically, in the small, four-bed ward. It was an open room with no partitions between the beds. Everything was white – the walls, the tiled floor, the bedclothes. John looked down and saw an IV inserted in the back of his right hand; when he looked up, he saw what he surmised to be a saline drip. D_ehydrated, then_, he thought. He feebly attempted to sit up, curious to see what his chart said. It was a bit more difficult than he expected.

"Easy there, laddie. You'll want to take it nice and slow," said a gruff voice in a mild Scottish burr.

John gave over the struggle and looked up. Joseph Bell was making his way towards him across the small ward. A tall man in a white lab coat, he looked to be in his late sixties and had a full head of snow-white hair, lively, intelligent light blue eyes, sharp features and a set to his mouth that made him look as though he was just on the edge of being amused or annoyed or both.

"Dr. Bell," John said, his voice rasping a bit.

"Dr. Watson," the older man replied, once again surprising John with this professional courtesy. "Feeling a bit more alert, I see?" He poured water into a paper cup from the pitcher on the bedside tray and, slipping his other hand behind John's neck to help him raise up a bit, held it to his patient's lips.

"How long have I been here?" John asked after drinking gratefully and settling back on his pillows.

"Since half five yesterday…it's just gone three in the afternoon, now," Bell added, checking his watch. "And you've been sleeping nearly the whole time. Best thing for you, really."

"The flu?" John guessed, handing the cup back for Bell to refill it.

"Indeed. The prison officer who unlocked your cell door so you could go for your evening meal called me when you wouldn't get up or answer him. Your fever was becoming dangerous and you were badly dehydrated, so I got you settled down here where I could keep on eye on you, put you on an IV drip, got some antivirals and antipyretics into you, and waited until your temperature started to come down before I felt comfortable leaving you with my night relief. The flu is definitely making the rounds among the inmates. Seems to have hit you particularly hard. Mind if I have a look?" Bell began warming the chest piece of his stethoscope as he spoke.

"Please," John gave permission, bemused both by the doctor's kindness and his demeanor of simple, human respect – a thing that prisoners didn't get much of in a place like this, where everything was "go here" and "do that," and rarely was one given even his own name.

Bell took John's vitals, checking his blood pressure, listening to his heart and lungs, looking into his eyes and ears with a flashlight. Last of all he took John's temperature, which had returned to normal – the fever had finally broken earlier that morning.

"Much better," he said approvingly. "I'll have the prison officer on the ward door call down to the canteen for some broth, jelly and juice…you need to eat lightly, plenty of clear fluids, but you know all that already. Hungry at all?"

John wasn't hungry, exactly, but he did feel empty. "I think I could eat," he admitted.

"Excellent," Bell responded. He stepped away for a moment to murmur to the guard outside the door; a few moments later he came back and, to John's surprise, pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down.

"Obviously I'm giving you more fluids, but this bag will be done soon. Even so, I think I'll keep you here one more night, but I see no reason why you can't return to your own room tomorrow morning."

_Room_, John thought ruefully, thinking of his bleak little cell with an involuntary shiver.

Bell's gaze became sharp. "Cold?" he demanded.

"What? Oh. No, I'm…fine. Good. Yeah."

Bell responded by fixing him with a piercing look that suddenly and painfully reminded John of Sherlock.

"No flu jab this year, eh, Doctor?"

John returned the look with a raised brow. "You can call me John…I don't really work as a doctor anymore," he said heavily. "And no, I didn't have a flu jab this past Fall…I usually do, but I was on remand, and…well, it wasn't exactly high on my list of priorities."

"Once a doctor, always a doctor," Bell retorted. "And I must say, _Doctor_, I'm surprised at you for letting your symptoms go…you needn't have become this ill. You must have realized what was happening?" His tone was chastising, like a teacher to a student, or a father to a son – not harsh, but chiding, as though he expected John to know better.

"No…no, I can't say as I did realize it," John said truthfully. He did not know how to explain to this man that these past six weeks had seemed like six years, and so thick was the fog of depression that surrounded him that it eclipsed the flu symptoms to the point where he thought his lethargy and achiness was due to entirely to his bleak state of mind.

Bell stared at him, his eyes narrowed. John had not felt so stripped bare by a gaze since…well, since _Sherlock_. The thought, as always, came with a stab of pain to his chest. He could feel his face tightening into his customary stoic mask.

Suddenly Bell spoke. "You deliberately ignored your worsening flu symptoms. Why? What's wrong, laddie?"

Yanked out of his thoughts of Sherlock, John gaped at him. Was the man serious?

"Should I be happy?" He asked tersely. "Am I at a Funfair?"

Suddenly John was furious.

"I've been sentenced to ten years in prison for a crime I didn't commit," he said coldly. "I'll probably never work as a doctor again – even if they _do_ let me renew my license when I get out of here I won't have been able to keep up with advancements in treatment and medicines, and even if I could, what clinic would hire a convicted criminal, and what patient would choose one for a GP? My career is finished, I'll be near to fifty by the time I get out of here which means any hopes I ever had of a wife and family are finished, and I watched my best friend chuck himself off a rooftop ten months ago. That's what's bloody wrong, since you ask."

John felt his throat was swelling. He wondered if being ill had brought his buried emotions closer to the surface, for he felt raw and bruised and ready to lash out. Rather than try to force the feelings back down, though, he ground out, angrily, "And you can stop calling me 'laddie'…I'm closing in on forty; I was a soldier, an officer in the RAMC, and a trauma surgeon until I got shot by an insurgent and washed out of both careers. So I don't need to be patronized by you or anyone else, thanks."

He felt sick, slightly dizzy, and out of control of his own life, which infuriated him. Breathing hard, he glared at he other man who had the freedom to leave this place whenever he wanted and to ask such _stupid, idiotic_ questions.

Bell met John's glare unflinchingly. After a few minutes, he said abruptly, "You'll have to excuse me; I suppose I feel I know you twice over. I knew your grandfather, for one thing, you see…and my son thought very highly of you."

Diverted, John said, nonplussed, "What?"

"Hamish McLean was your grandfather, wasn't he?"

John gaped at him. "How did you–"

"I taught at the University of Edinburgh," Bell said simply. "I was there the winter Dr. McLean did his famous series of guest lectures. Very capable doctor, your grandfather, with a great deal of wisdom to share, and some amazing experiences as an army doctor during World War II…he wrote them up very compellingly." Bell smiled a little. "And very, very proud of his grandson, who was at that time training at St. Bartholomew's in London and aiming hard to follow in his grandfather's footsteps as an army doctor."

He refilled the cup of water and offered it to John, who had managed to sit up more. John took it, drank deeply, then gazed at Bell again, bemused.

"But how could you know I was his grandson? My name–"

"He referred to you by name," Bell cut in smoothly. He hesitated, then added slowly, looking away from John for the first time, "I put two and two together when my son Benjamin spoke of you…he had a great respect for you."

John blinked. His son? Benjamin Bell…

_Oh._

Now that he knew the association, John could see where Ben, the cheerful young medic he had known for such a short time in Afghanistan, had inherited his lively, light blue eyes. John swallowed thickly.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," he said formally. "I didn't work with Ben directly, but from what little interaction I had with him I knew he was a fine man…a fine soldier and an excellent medic. He was…too young." John's voice trailed off as he lost himself for a moment in memories.

Bell kept his face averted. "Yes, well…" His mouth tightened after a moment and he brought his gaze back to John.

"Be that as it may," he said briskly, "but right now I'm thinking of my patient. I know you've had a bad blow, John. Too many bad blows," Bell amended hastily when he saw the wry twist of John's lips. "But this doesn't have to be the end."

"Doesn't it?" John asked wearily, lying back against his pillows again. He was surprised and slightly disgusted with himself…he was normally "stiff upper lip" personified, and here he was showing vulnerability to a virtual stranger. (Perhaps it was the fever that lowered his inhibitions, or his compassion for Bell having lost his only child, or the association with his grandfather, or all three.)

"This is bad, I grant you," Bell said gently. "But it may not be so long as you fear. And you can still be useful."

Useful. It was, at the heart of it, all John had ever really wanted from himself, to justify his existence in this world – useful to others, so he became a doctor; useful to his country, so he became a soldier. For a while – a little, little while – he had hoped he was useful to Sherlock, a man greater than John ever could be.

"How?" John asked the ceiling. He had almost forgotten for the moment that someone else was there. "How can I be useful to _anyone_ when I'm locked up a minimum of twenty-one hours out of twenty-four, when I can't practice medicine, or help–"

He was going to say, _or help Sherlock_, but he stopped, not ready to put that into audible words just yet.

"You can still read and study," Bell said firmly. "You can still write, even if you can't keep a blog anymore. And you may yet find ways to be useful to people in here."

John closed his eyes. He said nothing.

"I can prescribe you some antidepressants if you need me to, laddie, or something to help you sleep if you're having trouble there," Bell went on. "But you're a doctor, and you know as well as I do the positive effects just taking care of yourself can have on your psyche. Eating properly, for a start – you're definitely much thinner than you were when you came in here, and I know it wasn't just the 'flu that caused it. Going out to the yard at every opportunity. Getting some exercise in the gym."

John opened his eyes and fixed them onto Bell

"Why do you care?" he asked with real curiosity. "You must see thousands of…of _lags_* like me go through."

Bell smiled. "I do that, indeed. But I know a survivor when I see one."

Before either of them could say anything else, an orderly appeared with a tray of food.

"Ah, thank you, Frank," Bell said easily, rising from his chair and stepping up to the bed to help John sit up. He then took the tray from the orderly and deposited it on John's lap.

"Eat up, laddie," he said bracingly. "Then try to sleep some more. "We'll talk again later."

Bell rested his hand briefly on John's shoulder, then turned and left the room.

John lifted his spoon and looked down at the clear broth. He was surprised to feel a real thread of hunger in his stomach, the first since he had come to this place, and he crushed a cracker into the broth before beginning to eat.

He did not deceive himself that the old doctor's words had sparked a new life in him. John still felt worn down emotionally, and a pep talk was not going to dispel his gloom. But he found to his surprise that he liked Bell. The man had the same comforting demeanor that John's grandfather had had, and the same pragmatic, clear-eyed way of looking at things.

_This doesn't have to be the end_.

John didn't know if it would be possible for him to forge some kind of life here, but he figured he might as well take Bell's advice and try.

After all, it wasn't as though he had anything else to do.

* * *

_*lag: British slang for a criminal, prisoner, ex-convict; prison time_


	10. Confrontations, Part I

_Warning: this chapter contains strong language. Reader discretion is advised._

* * *

**October 2013**

Despite the studious application of ice, his brother's fist had left a dark bruise on Mycroft's jaw that could not be concealed entirely. Resigned to the mark's presence and in a thoroughly bad mood, Mycroft began his day as he usually did at the Diogenes Club, in the usual private room reserved for his exclusive use. When the dress-coated attendant had brought him his customary pot of coffee along with the morning edition of various newspapers, he had raised his eyebrows in surprise at the sight of the bruise; Mycroft had met his gaze with a stone-cold look that quelled any further expressions of curiosity at once, and the man left hurriedly to attend to his other duties.

Mycroft poured coffee into a china cup and reached for his copy of _The Economist_. Holding it on his lap, he stared unseeingly at the front page. Much against his will, his racing thoughts would not let him concentrate on the reading material. They were far too preoccupied with Sherlock…and with John Watson.

Setting aside the newspaper, Mycroft pulled out a duplicate of the file he had given to Sherlock. He opened it. On top was the picture of John coming out of the Old Bailey just last week – the one that clearly showed the scar on his face while he cowered behind Lestrade, trying to evade the journalists swarming around him.

Looking at John's wary, wounded eyes, remembering Sherlock's cry of distress from yesterday, Mycroft wondered how the hell it had all gone so _bloody_ wrong.

He had not meant for John to be hurt. He had only meant to protect him…and, if he was being honest with himself, to keep him out of the way.

Nothing had gone the way he and Sherlock had expected. Mycroft realized now that he had underestimated Moriarty, or perhaps he had overestimated himself. Maybe it was both. Regardless, neither he nor Sherlock had believed that it would take more than six months at most to bring down Moriarty's network. Mycroft would never have arranged to have John end up in prison, but once the doctor was there, it had seemed…_prudent_ to leave him be. And he had never intended for it to be so long…a day turned into a week, a week turned into a month, and before he knew it, two years had gone by. But the important thing was that John had been safe…at least, safer than he would have been running loose in London, stalked by Moriarty's assassin who had, maddeningly, escaped Mycroft's net; safe from his own reckless tendencies (for Mycroft had no doubt the doctor would have tried to get to the bottom of things); safe from potentially compromising Sherlock's cover (and, therefore, Sherlock's own safety) if he had not been content to let things lie.

That was worth a bit of boredom, surely?

Mycroft studied the photograph. He was not as confident of the rightness of his position in this matter as he normally was. That scar…just how deeply did it run?

He was jerked suddenly out of his reverie by a commotion from the hall. He heard the attendant's distressed tones raised in a loud whisper outside the door, "Sir, you can't just barge in on Mr. Holmes! I need to announce you! Sir, _please_!"

Sighing, Mycroft set the file aside as he heard the door open behind him. He schooled his features and made his voice especially snide as he turned in his swivel chair and said, "Right on schedule…still in a snit, are we, brother mine?"

Then he broke off when he saw who had just come into the ornate room.

It was not Sherlock.

It was John Watson.

The normally unflappable Mycroft Holmes was completely lost for words at that moment (a thing that rarely, if ever, happened), but his deductive skills ran on unchecked.

_Thinner than when we last met by at least a stone…his clothes are looser; even his old hunting jacket is a bit big on him. He wouldn't have been allowed to have his own garments at Frankland, but he has not yet returned to Baker Street…Mrs. Hudson must have brought some of them to him at Lestrade's bedsit. Hair greyer than it was, though at first glance this might be go unnoticed as the grey strands blend into the blond ones. Face more deeply lined – he has experienced a great deal of stress, though the dark circles he is currently sporting are indicative of a poor night's sleep; that, combined with the mud on his shoes which could only have come from the South Bank would indicate he has been walking for most of the night…hair tousled forward, obviously he was moving with his back to the wind. Wind direction, time and location: sometime after 2 a.m. Fatigued, left hand appeared clenched before he put it behind his back to stand at parade rest…emotions reined in tight. Facial scar is still quite red…it will take several years to fade to a silver-white…_

It was the eyes, though, that were the most disconcerting to Mycroft – John's steady, ice-cold eyes. It was a look that pinned Mycroft to his seat and stole from his throat the courteous greeting he was trying to frame before he'd even drawn in a breath to form the words.

Before he could find his voice, John abruptly asked, "Who nutted you? I'd like to buy him a drink."

John's voice was cold, but almost casual – neither loud nor overly emotional. He seemed somehow remote and detached from the entire proceedings, and Mycroft, who had been more…_agitated_ than he would have liked to admit just a few seconds earlier, now reclassified his own state of mind as being merely _concerned_, and he waved away the attendant who was fluttering his hands behind John as though he wanted to do something but wasn't sure what (particularly if it involved the small yet somehow very imposing figure standing before Mycroft). The man fled gladly, closing the door behind him.

Mycroft turned his full attention back to John. Something in the younger man's expression warned him that to lie at all now would be a serious mistake.

"My dear brother, in his impetuosity, regressed to a more infantile expression of disapproval when he learned of your…incarceration," Mycroft said, forcing a rather sour smile. He wondered if this information would help to earn Sherlock a place back in the doctor's good books, but John's expression gave nothing away. Instead, he looked around the room.

"Figured I'd find you here," he remarked. "It's where you were when I saw you last, and you _are_ a creature of habit, aren't you." It wasn't a question, so Mycroft didn't answer. Indeed, he noticed his throat was suddenly quite dry…he felt rather as though he had been shut up with a small lion that wasn't hungry, but hadn't yet decided whether or not it was in the mood to toy with its prey.

John shifted his gaze back to Mycroft.

"Quite a conversation we had back then," he said, almost conversationally. "When you told me about Moriarty, and asked me to tell Sherlock you were sorry. The way your voice stuttered and halted…you should have gone on the stage. Hell, you could have won a bloody BAFTA that day."

"John–" Mycroft began.

"Dr. Watson to you," John corrected sharply. Mycroft swallowed. John had never been the kind of man who worried about what title people used to address him, or even if they used one at all.

"Dr. Watson," Mycroft amended placatingly. He knew he would have to tread very carefully. "If you recall our exact conversation, you'll realize I never did actually lie to you…what I said was the truth. You inferred the rest."

"Fool me once, shame on me, eh?" John asked. He smiled a bitter little smile, and his eyes were like a wild thing's – alert, wary and watchful. "Well, I guess one could say I paid for my trust…with two years of my life, I paid for it. But you did warn me, I suppose," he conceded. "The day I met you, you did warn me."

Mycroft suddenly found himself faltering. "I never meant–"

"Oh, now _that_ sounds familiar," John's voice lowered to an almost-growl through a half-smile. "Maybe I can even help you finish the thought this time…you never meant to leave me to rot in that prison for two years, is that what you were going to say?"

"No, I didn't," Mycroft said firmly. "I swear to you, John, I didn't. Neither Sherlock" (Mycroft tried not to notice how John winced at the sound of his brother's name) "nor I believed it would take as long as it did to dismantle Moriarty's network. Moriarty's lieutenant was on the loose in London; he had been targeting you that day at St. Batholomew's. I thought you were safer…in custody. Sherlock didn't even know you had been arrested; I never told him. We both wanted to keep you out of the line of fire, and I feared you would do something rash. It was never supposed to be for long–"

"You. Decided. I would be. _Safer_. In custody?" John's sandy brows lowered dangerously along with his voice. His hands came around to his sides and his fists were clenched, though he stayed where he was by the door.

Mycroft had the uneasy feeling that John was staying well back not because he couldn't stand being close to Mycroft, but because he didn't trust himself to come any closer…that John feared what he might do if some part of Mycroft were within his grasp – like, say, his neck.

John swung away a moment, and Mycroft, flinching at the sudden movement, could see the muscles cording and bunching in the doctor's neck and shoulders as he strove to remain in control of himself.

"You arrogant...pompous…self-righteous…_arse_." John still wasn't shouting, but he was breathing hard now, and the tension from his clenched fists was visibly spreading through his arms, shoulders, chest, torso…Mycroft discreetly felt for his phone in his breast pocket…he was beginning to be afraid that the younger man might suddenly fly at him.

But John did not. Instead, he closed his eyes and took deep, steadying breaths.

"You thought you could just _kennel_ me, is that it?" he said, once he had got himself back under control. He turned to look at Mycroft full on. "Moriarty once referred to me as Sherlock's '_pet_.'" John's eyes grew distant for a moment and his lips twisted in disgust at the remembered insult. Then he refocused on Mycroft. "And that's what you thought, too, isn't it? You and your brother both." He gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, I see it now. The pair of you lied to me, told me a fairy story the way a parent does to a child to get it to go along with something, and then put me on ice for two years…never giving me any say, any warning, anything to _fucking_ hold onto–"

John's voice broke a little. He faltered and looked down.

"You ruined me," he whispered, so softly Mycroft almost missed it. "The pair of you. You ruined my life."

"John–"

The doctor's head snapped up. Mycroft recoiled slightly; John's eyes were glowing like blue flames with an almost feral look.

"Greg – Detective Inspector Lestrade – he believed I was innocent. And you _knew_ I was innocent. He wanted me to contact you, ask you to help me. He was angry with me when I wouldn't – said I was too bloody proud. I'll bet he contacted you himself to ask you to intervene on my behalf, didn't he?"

Mycroft's silence was a confirmation. John nodded, then went on.

"I didn't because I was so…bloody…_furious_ with you, for betraying your brother to Moriarty. That's what I told Greg. But there was more…I also felt…guilty. I thought you blamed me. I put your brother in the limelight with that bloody blog, and then, when you asked me to protect him, I failed. I figured you thought I _deserved_ whatever I got, for letting your brother die. And _I _figured I deserved it, too…it was justice."

Mycroft was aghast. "John, that was _never_–"

John went on without acknowledging the interruption.

"But that was never true at all. None of it was true…all a lie, and you and your brother used me to put on a show, to convince those watching that it was all real. You let me believe it, and you left me to rot."

John closed his eyes and bowed his head; he was shaking with the effort to keep himself under control. When he finally looked up again, his face was furious, his shoulders hunched, and his fists were clenched painfully tight at his sides. His whole body seems so taut it might snap at any moment. When he spoke, his voice came out in a low hiss.

"Now you listen to me, you cold-hearted bastard…I have only one request of you, and one only. Then you and me are quits for good, yeah? It's this – _stay the hell away from me_. Don't speak to me, don't look at me, don't send me anything in the mail, don't put any funds in my account, don't watch me on CCTV. Don't call me, don't text me. Don't contact me in any way. Don't say my name. Don't speak on my behalf. Don't send anyone to 'protect' me. Don't so much as nod to me on the street if we happen to pass one another – hell, don't even make eye contact. Pretend I don't exist, and I'll pretend you don't exist. Because if you don't, Mycroft…if you do _anything_ to interfere with my life, or even just remind me of your existence on this planet in _any_ way whatsoever, I swear to God…I will fucking _kill you_ with my bare hands. I _will_ kill you, and if they send me back to prison for it, I'll go singing a bloody song, considering it well worth it."

John nailed Mycroft to his chair with a particularly venomous look for one long moment. Then, giving a sharp nod, he straightened, turned on his heel and left the room. He closed the door quietly behind him.

And Mycroft Holmes, frozen in his chair, pressed his hand to his thudding heart and tried to catch his breath. Not for nothing did Sherlock once call him "the most dangerous man John had ever met," and Mycroft was used to being the most feared man in whatever room he occupied. But that had not been true today.

John had threatened his life. Mycroft had caused men and women to disappear for less. But he believed John. He believed John had meant what he said – that he would kill Mycroft if Mycroft tried to interfere with him again.

It wasn't until much later, after a large brandy, that it suddenly occurred to Mycroft that John had never once mentioned Sherlock by name.

* * *

Mycroft was in his office later that same day when his second confrontation occurred. This one he had been expecting.

It was his assistant who gave him warning. She looked rather perturbed, for her. "Sir, your brother is–"

Before she could finish, Sherlock strode into the room like an avenging angel. He glared daggers at Mycroft, then turned the fierce gaze on the female assistant. "Leave."

She looked to Mycroft, who nodded, and exited the room, closing the door behind her.

Unlike John's quiet fury, Sherlock's vibrated through his every muscle. His eyes flashed and his curls stood wildly on end, reminding Mycroft of an agitated cat.

The pale grey eyes swept over Mycroft and the room like a pair of searchlights.

"He came to see you," Sherlock ground out. "John saw you at your infernal club…what did he say to you?"

His little brother he could handle. Mycroft threw down his pen and rose to his feet behind his desk so that his gaze was level with Sherlock's. He kept his voice soft and scornful when he answered.

"Deduce it yourself, Sherlock…John is not particularly imaginative; he wanted to take me to task for his wrongful incarceration. And I must say, he was far more in control of himself than you apparently are – quite a feat, given that he is the offended party here."

"_Offended_?" Sherlock cried. "Is that what you call it – _offended_? If I had known–"

"Well, you didn't," Mycroft said sharply. "Nor did you inquire. You left your 'friends' to me and I kept them safe as you requested, in the manner I saw fit, since you weren't specific as to how that should be accomplished."

"_Safe_? Did it never occur to you that there isn't a prison in England that doesn't hold a criminal whom _I_ put there?" Sherlock demanded. He raised his hands to his head and clenched his fists into his hair, hard enough to hurt. "Oh, _God_! You saw his face! That was done with a razor, I expect, and not recently." He flung his hands down, tearing some hair with them, and leveled a look of such hatred at Mycroft that the older man faltered for a moment. "Did you think it for his own good…a worthy exchange for keeping him _safe_ from Moriarty's people? The devil we _didn't _know, in this case, was better than the one we did?"

"Don't be melodramatic," Mycroft snapped, provoked enough now to refrain from long speeches. "He was in a British prison, not some Third World POW camp…really, Sherlock, you can spare me your visions of dungeons and chains and medieval torture devices. Safe, clean, well-run, civilized–"

"Oh, do spare _me_ your hymn to Queen and Country, Mycroft," Sherlock interrupted rudely. "You only make yourself look even _more_ ridiculous. If your lovely prisons are so safe, how did John come to be injured in such a way?"

Mycroft felt uncomfortable. "In a high-security prison, there is occasionally bound to be instances of random violence, even as there are on a London street."

"I doubt that was random, but I'm going to find out…unless you care to enlighten me now?" Here Sherlock glared shrewdly from under his curly fringe. "I'm sure in your _care_ and _concern_ you've been checking up on him regularly."

Mycroft felt uncomfortable. "I've kept a weather eye on him, of course."

"A 'weather eye,'" Sherlock said scornfully. "In a prison environment, someone like John – an adrenaline fiend with PTSD – _you_ deduced those things about him as soon as I did –"

Now it was Mycroft's turn to interrupt.

"Worried about his post-traumatic stress disorder and propensity for danger, are we?" he said disdainfully. "What did you _think_ he would do while you were away? Nothing, I wager, but sit safely in Baker Street, waiting for his master's return, a return he had no reason to expect! I believe you give the good doctor rather too much credit, Sherlock. I've had my doubts as to the veracity of his PTSD diagnosis from the beginning, and whatever other sterling qualities John Watson may have – and I do acknowledge he has them – an above-average intelligence is not among them. I judged him to have enough intelligence to keep his mind occupied with pursuits of a scholarly and/or literary nature, yet not so much as to cause him to suffer from a lack of stimulation such as you or I would experience."

Sherlock ground his teeth audibly. "You judge John to be just another 'goldfish,' is that it, Mycroft? And here you're supposed to be the smart one."

Mycroft glowered. "I _am_ the smart one."

"And I know my friend!"

"Oh yes. Friends. Of course, you go in for that sort of thing now." Mycroft was scornful.

"And you don't," Sherlock said coldly. "Or rather, _they_ don't go in for _you_. Perhaps you were glad to have John out of the way because you were jealous of what he has been to me…just as you were jealous when the puppy _you_ chose preferred–"

Mycroft slammed his fists down on the desk. "_Enough_!" he roared.

The uncharacteristic outburst, so unlike the normally cool, unruffleable Mycroft, shocked both brothers into silence. For a moment they stood, glaring at one another, struggling to regain control. Then, in a much calmer voice, Mycroft spoke.

"Your concern over your blogger's…_emotional issues_ is touching, I'm sure, Sherlock," he said silkily. "But it is also, at this time, misplaced. We have larger matters to concern ourselves with – namely, an imminent terror strike on London and the continued elusiveness of Moriarty's second-in-command, who is, in all likelihood, involved. _This_ is why you were brought back to England, and _this_ is what you will focus on."

"Oh, will I?" Sherlock sneered.

Mycroft's eyes narrowed as the feeling of déjà vu swept over him. He lowered his voice, but his tone was no less menacing. "Yes, Sherlock. You will."

Sherlock held Mycroft's gaze as he took a step backwards towards the door. "I will find your underground terror cell, Mycroft. And I will find this _nameless assassin_. And when I have…you and I are through."

Sherlock glared at his brother a moment longer. Then, in a swirl of black coat and blue scarf, he swept back through the door.

Unlike John, he slammed it hard behind him.

The resounding _crash_ shook the office, and shook Mycroft down to his bones. Uttering a shaky sigh, he sank down in this chair and buried his face in his hands.

Sherlock would get over his snit eventually. And so would John.

Mycroft was sure of it.

* * *

_Special thanks to hajimebassaidai for her Brit-picking skills._


	11. Coping Mechanisms

_**Warning**__: this chapter contains strong language, violence, and scenes that some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised._

* * *

"_I have no enemies here."  
_"_Yeah? Wait awhile."  
_–From _The Shawshank Redemption_

**April 2012**

They had been targeting him from the beginning. Four of them – Cartwright, Biddle, Hayward and Moffat* – were in for murdering their compatriot, Sutton, who had turned Queen's evidence on them after they robbed the Worthington Bank in exchange for a lighter sentence. They might have got away with it, too – New Scotland Yard had been satisfied that Sutton's apparent suicide was exactly what it looked like until Sherlock had appeared on the scene. (He had not only declared that the "suicide" was in fact a murder – he also called upon his considerable knowledge of tobacco ash to deduce how many people were present in the room where it happened, where they stood, and how the crime was carried out; then, with a few taps on his mobile, he produced the names of the perpetrators.)

The other three – James Winter (assault), Roger Prescott (counterfeiting), and Jack Woodley (fraud) – had nothing in common other than the fact that they, too, were being detained at Her Majesty's pleasure courtesy of one Sherlock Holmes. They were, of course, unable to express their feelings about their incarceration to the consulting detective himself, but were more than willing to use John as a stand-in (despite the fact that their cases were all solved before John had even met Sherlock).

It wasn't until early April that these seven men began to make themselves troublesome. They had held back at first, watching John with appraising eyes, trying to get his measure. In those first weeks, they did no more than participate in the usual "hazing" that the rest of the prison population enacted upon the new prisoners. This was just as well for John, for it wasn't until after his nasty bout with the flu that he began to come back to himself a bit…had Cartwright and his cronies started their campaign on him earlier, he might not have been emotionally ready to deal with it.

On his first full day in prison, John had been locked down until lunch at eleven in the morning next day. When his door opened after that first sleepless night, he had risen stiffly from his place on the floor and stepped out onto the landing hesitantly, unsure of what to do. Then he spotted Wiggins to his right, who gave him a wink and a smile and whispered, "Stick with me, doc."

So John did, following Wiggins and the rest of the "herd" to the wing's canteen, which was overwhelmingly packed with prisoners, and dreadfully noisy. Glancing around surreptitiously from his place on the queue, John thought that some of the men could have rivaled the Golem for sheer size – he later learned that these were long-term prisoners who spent most of their time working out with weights in the gym.

Mostly, though, John just stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact.

The lunch was singularly uninspired, if not downright unappetizing: a jacket potato with nothing on it, a tired sandwich, and some awful tea. There was no pudding. They were to take it back to their cells, which in a way was a relief – John hated being banged up**, but the noise and the crowdedness of the canteen was overwhelming to his frayed nerves.

He spent his first sosh† on the wing with Bill Wiggins, getting to know more about the young street person who had known Sherlock, and who was both a whiz at creating drug compounds and a seasoned lag†† with a fair amount of useful advice to offer.

Sosh was easily the most intimidating time for John during those first weeks – it was, Wiggins warned him, when the other prisoners would try to see how far they could push John, and to what extent they could bully him. Wiggins's advice was simple and straightforward: accept nothing from anyone and fight everyone who tried to pick a fight, even if you were bound to come off worst – back down once, he warned John, and you might as well resign yourself to becoming someone's bitch.

John took the point.

So during his first few weeks at Frankland, John avoided the showers altogether and took sponge baths in his pad. When a bloke in a cell further down the wing, wanting to get John in his debt, dropped by and tried to get him to accept everything from a wrap of speed to a sixteenth of an ounce of marijuana (the going rate was two ounces of 'baccy), John told him to piss off. When another prisoner offered him a mobile, gratis, John said coldly he didn't want anything that had come out of another bloke's arse, thanks (God knew how they managed it). When a guy "accidentally" knocked John's lunch out of his hands in the canteen, sending the food scattering across the floor, John (with a roll of the eyes – seriously, could it get more juvenile than this?) stabbed the man's hand with his fork. True, the utensil was made of plastic, but it was still a hard enough jab to make the guy yelp, which made the other prisoners guffaw in appreciation. And when a particularly ill-tempered screw*† came over, demanding to know what the problem was, John told him it was none of his damn business, earning himself a day in his cell, but also the increased respect of the other prisoners present both for standing up to the screw and for not grassing on his fellow prisoner.

By his fourth week, John ventured to shower. Only one man showed interest in trying something; John, who was ready, immediately whipped his bar of soap at the guy as hard as he could, hitting him in the eye and leaving him with a shiner that lasted two full weeks. From that time on he had little trouble with the general prison population, for the word had gone out: that little Watson bloke might not be all that big, but he was tough as nails and feisty as hell; he knew how to handle himself and wasn't prepared to put up with any shit. The consensus was reached: there was no point in bothering with him when there were other, easier pickings elsewhere.

This did not, however, hold true for the remaining members of the Worthington Bank Gang and their three hangers-on – or, as John secretly dubbed them, "Sherlock's fan club." They kept their distance, watching John carefully, so that he felt their interest and animosity before he even knew whom they were.

It was Wiggins who let him in on it.

"All seven of 'em was busted by your detective, yeah?" Wiggins explained as they walked in aimless circles around the exercise yard one raw, damp day. "And none of 'em too happy about it, if you understand what I mean. You'll want to be careful, doc, or they'll be taking their mad out on you."

"Lovely," John sighed.

In some ways, he didn't much care what happened to him. Before his illness, he had stuck up for himself here out of habit more than anything else – habit and pride. He had always been on the small side of average, and he had always had to fight for his place in the world. He'd fought to get away from his difficult home, fought to get his medical degree, fought to make his way as a career soldier. In school he had fought to make them let him play rugby. While in the army, he had fought for the lives of others. When he was shot, he had fought for his own life, then fought to recover and become mobile again. When he found that all his fighting could not give him back the life he had built for himself, he had almost given up. Then he met Sherlock, and he found himself fighting for Sherlock.

In the end, he had not been able to save Sherlock, not his reputation, not his life. Now John was tired of fighting. It was enough.

Strangely, it was Dr. Bell – with his reminisces of John's Granddad McLean and the old man's own dead son who had briefly served as one of John's medics, who reminded John that he is a fighter – and that true fighters can never truly bring themselves to give up a fight.

As he recovered from the flu and began to adapt to his new life, John began to perk up a bit. He still felt dull and listless, but now he began to look forward to his visits from Greg and Mrs. Hudson, to enjoy talking to them on the telephone, and to correspond with Bill Murray, Mike Stamford and his old CO James Sholto (these were among the few who still believed in him).

And then there was Wiggins. The lad was sharp as a whip, but strangely vulnerable, and he brought out John's protective instincts. He found himself watching over young Bill as much as Bill watched over him, for Wiggins had a mouth then tended to run ahead of his brain and an over-developed sense of humor that many of the other, less lively men did not understand. Already John had saved him from more than one pounding by an irritated prisoner he had managed to tick off. Now he was trying to talk the younger man into enrolling in an Open University course – Bill was in for four years, but John was sure he could get out sooner, and he wanted to see the lad channel his potential into a more productive direction and build some kind of life for himself off the streets.

But as John's tenacity and spirit began to resurface along with his health and sense of purpose, so did the Worthington Gang's malevolent interest.

At first it was just whispered threats, insults and petty knocks in the exercise yard or coming to or from the canteen. Then one day in April, about three weeks after John had recovered from the flu, Cartwright came into his cell at the start of sosh. Two of his compatriots – Biddle and Hayward – were behind him.

John, looking up from his desk where he was addressing a letter to Mike that he wanted to send out that day, paused and tensed immediately, rising to his feet.

"Give us your fucking 'baccy," Cartwright said without preamble.

"I don't smoke," John shot back coolly.

"Then we'll take it out of you in blood."

And then all three of them were on him, landing heavy punches that knocked him into the sink. He managed to get a few good shots in himself, but three against one is not the best odds, and they dragged John from the room and onto the landing, shoving him back hard against the stair rail.

"So you're the detective's sidekick," Cartwright observed. "You don't look like much…more of a tag-along, I'm guessing, yeah?"

He made the mistake of leaning a bit too close while pretending to examine him, and John lunged forward against the restraining arms and head butted him. While Cartwright staggered back with a bloody nose, John heard a familiar voice from the lower landing call up, "Oi!"

John glanced over the rail to see Wiggins, pale but determined, starting up the stairs. He halted when John yelled out to him.

"Don't come up here, Wiggy, there's too many of them! Get help! Get–"

Moffat backhanded him, cutting off his cry. John tasted the iron tang of blood in his mouth.

Not a good sign. When things got violent, the prisoners tended to avoid hurting one another where the injuries would show. The face blow indicated that Cartwright didn't care if they disciplined him so long as he got to hurt John badly.

The former bank robber and murderer drew close, his face dark with fury. "Gag him!" he spat.

Winter ducked into John's cell and came out again with a sock from the pile of laundry John had been folding earlier. He stepped to the right and slightly behind John (as far as he could with the stair railing) and looped the sock around John's head, jerking it tight until John had to give in and open his mouth. It was too short to tie off, so Winter simply held it in place as Cartwright advanced on the doctor.

"I hear you got shot before," Cartwright said. "Let's see then. Pull his shirt up, Jimmy."

Frantic, John looked up the walkway. Further along the wing, near the railing so they could easily be seen, Hayward and Biddle were pretending to chat, smiling and nodding, so as to give the impression to any screws that might be passing below that all was well; they were also in a position to block John should he wrench himself free and try to reach for the emergency alarm button near his cell door. Woodley and Prescott had him by the arms; Winter had forced the sock through his teeth and was holding it with both hands at the back of John's head to gag him. Moffat had one arm across his chest, pressing John back against the stair railing, and at Cartwright's order he used the other to yank John's t-shirt up.

Cartwright stood before him, casually lighting up a cigarette.

"Now, let's just think about this," he said conversationally as John struggled furiously to free himself. "What would be the best way to make sure you remember, you don't answer to that ol' detective of yours no more, but to us, now? Eh?"

Cartright pretended to think about it a moment. Then suddenly he seemed to brighten.

"I know!" he said cheerfully. "How 'bout a brand? 'WG' for the 'Worthington Gang.' You'll always remember who owns you with that!"

There was a tense moment of silence, then Woodley and Prescott both began to chortle. But John went cold.

_They don't understand, these two, _he thought._ They think he's just joking. They're small-timers themselves. They don't get that Cartwright's unstable._

At that moment all conscious thought was driven out of his mind as Cartwright pushed the point of the burning fag into his right flank.

John did his best to hold back the scream that was building in his throat, but it isn't an easy thing to do when a man is holding a lit cigarette against one's side. (Having his mate gag you with a sock helps, of course.) Through the graying edges of his vision, he saw Woodley and Prescott staring horrified at Cartwright as the smell of John's burning flesh reached them.

"Jesus, Mickey, don't really burn 'im!" Prescott cried.

Cartwright drew the cigarette back and glared at the two men on either side of John.

"Shut the fuck up and hold him still, or I swear you're next," he growled darkly. Then he pressed the end of the cigarette against John's skin again, a little lower than before. It hurt as much as the first one did and John let out a muffled cry of anguish. It wasn't as bad as being shot, of course, but it did make him think, crazily, of his old Sunday school teacher telling the class of children that Hell wasn't really a lake of fire, that the image was used as an analogy for the absence of God – something so painful it could not be imagined, and so those describing it compared it to being burned, the worst pain a human body could know.

As Cartwright relit the tapped out end of the cigarette and pressed it a third time to John's side, John's head, while bursting with the suppressed agony, suddenly cleared in that cool, delicious way it did when his adrenaline flooded his senses, washing out fear and anger and pain and stress and leaving him with a crystal clarity that he never experienced otherwise. It had helped him during difficult surgeries, emergency battlefield medicine, and on dangerous cases with Sherlock, and now it untangled the strands of confused thought in his mind so that he could concentrate.

_Right. I've got Woodley on the right and Prescott on the left. Winter in back a bit but more off to the side. In front of me I've got Cartwright, Moffat, and Biddle and Hayward down the walkway. That leaves just one avenue for escape – backwards._

It wasn't ideal. Behind him was the stair railing, with an eight-foot drop to the first landing. The odds of him escaping injury from such a jump were not very high, especially with the risk of hitting the net.

Then Cartwright pressed the cigarette to his side a fourth time, and as the pain exploded in John's mind he thought, suddenly, how long it would take the bastard to form the letter 'W'. That decided him.

Pretending to faint with the pain, John lolled his head back and let his knees buckle suddenly. As he had hoped, Winter dropped the gag, and Woodley and Prescott reflexively tightened their grip on his arms as Moffat jumped back, startled.

_Perfect_, John thought grimly, and he pushed off hard, on his bent legs in a powerful thrust that sent his body flying up and back, tearing his arms free from Prescott and Woodley's grasp and propelling him up and over the railing. As he went over, he lashed out with his feet and caught Cartwright squarely in the solar plexus, driving the air out of his lungs in a long _whoof!_ and giving John the extra propulsion he needed to get all the way over the railing.

It was a fast drop to the landing below, but John did his best to tuck and roll. It worked, and he hoped he'd mostly only have some nasty bruises to show for it, but the initial impact on his bad shoulder was enough to jerk a snarled yelp out of him as he felt something _give_. He pushed down the pain – he wasn't yet done.

Bouncing to his feet, John looked up to see Woodley, Prescott and Winter all staring down at him over the railing with identical looks of shock on their faces. And then John dashed – not _down_ the stairs to safety, as they were expecting, but _up_ the stairs and back towards his tormentors.

When John regained the landing, he saw that Cartwright was just managing to pull himself upright again. Lowering his head and charging forward, John caught him in a flying tackle that would have made his old rugby coach proud: Cartwright was slammed, flat on his back, onto the concrete floor with John on top, and what little air he had left was driven from his lungs as John began pummeling him with both fists, making every blow count.

Woodley, Prescott, Moffat and Winter were too stunned to react, and just stared open-mouthed at John. (One of the advantages of being on the small side, John took a moment to reflect, was that people tended to underestimate you.) Down the hall, Biddle and Hayward began hissing frantically, "Screw! Screw!" and all six men bolted, leaving Cartwright and John tussling on the floor.

"Oi! Stop that! Get off of 'im!"

John felt hands grabbing at his arms and moved to bat them off; his blood was up now and he was ready to throttle this son of a bitch. But then, through the red cloud obscuring his vision, he saw that the arms pulling at him were uniformed. He stopped fighting and allowed the prison officers to drag him away from the bloody, battered Cartwright.

* * *

Cartwright spent three days in the healthcare centre, then a week confined to his pad. John was also given "days" for fighting; only two, but to him it felt like two weeks. Still, it was worth it – the incident solidified his reputation as a force to be reckoned with and, better still, broke up "Sherlock's fan club," at least somewhat…Woodley, Winter and Prescott decided that it would be in their best interest to let bygones be bygones with John (to whom they were grateful for not grassing on them) and not to associate with the Worthington Bank Gang anymore.

But while the remaining members of the fan club no longer took part in petty insults and jabs, John could see by the look on Cartwright's face when they passed one another during sosh that, as far as he was concerned, this was far from over.

* * *

It was Bell who first made John aware of the fact that he was feeling markedly better.

After Bell had seen to Cartwright (who was in a considerably worse state than John), he saw to John's hurts. The younger doctor sat, shirtless, on an exam table while Bell patched him up, dressing the burns and applying a cold pack to the wrenched shoulder, probing the bruises to make sure nothing was broken.

"I'm sorry this happened, but I suppose it was inevitable," the older man sighed, fitting John for a sling. "I'm relieved you came out of it all right. It could have gone a great deal worse, I hope you realize. That was a hell of a risk you took, laddie, jumping over the railing like that."

"I'd rather break my own neck than have one of _them_ do it for me," John replied tersely.

Bell frowned at this and looked searchingly into his face. John, feeling unaccountably uncomfortable, lowered his eyelids. Bell reached over and pulled them up again with gentle fingers. He looked worried, puzzled.

"Are you on anything?" he demanded suddenly.

"What?" John sputtered. "Am I…no, I'm bloody not!" He glared at the older man in indignation.

Bell huffed out a frustrated breath. "It's just…oh, hell, I don't know how to put it. You look sort of…_manic_, as if you were on something, but I believe you when you say you're not."

Staring at him, John felt a memory stir.

"_Seen a lot of injuries, then; violent deaths?"_

"_Mmm, yes."_

"_Bit of trouble too, I bet."_

"_Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much."_

"_Want to see some more?"_

"_Oh God, yes."_

John shook away the memory abruptly.

"Look – Dr. Bell–"

"Joseph."

John blinked. "Joseph, then. Thank you." He cleared his throat, then went on.

"Look…Joseph. I'm just keyed up, from everything, you know? I don't get keyed up while things are happening, it usually happens after. Then I crash. Guess it was the army that made me that way." He tried to smile, but Dr. Bell still looked unsure.

"Prison life…there's a lot of violence here, John. It's a pressure cooker. Lot of grown men, locked up together, bored, frustrated, pent-up feelings…things happen," he said finally. "Just…try not to be reckless, all right?"

John studied the older man for a moment. He wasn't quite sure what Bell was asking him, so he simply said, "Yes…I'll be careful. But this had to happen, Joseph. Things will be a bit easier now, I think."

"I hope so."

Later, in his bunk after lights out, John couldn't help noticing that he felt lighter, less oppressed, and…well, _freer_ than he had since he had come here.

* * *

_*Moffat: Believe it or not, I wasn't referencing our boy Steven when I used this name! The members of the Worthington Bank gang (plus the details of their crime, which is the same as outlined above) are named in the ACD short story, "The Resident Patient," a Sherlock Holmes mystery that I found to be particularly clever and enjoyable. I also thought it a fitting crime to reference in this story because it involved a staged suicide that the police were prepared to accept as the real thing. Reminds me of someone we know. :-)_

_**bang up/banged up: British prison slang for locked up; to lock up in prison or, for an prisoner, be locked up in one's cell_

†_sosh: "sosh" or "association time." In a British prison, this is the hour during which prisoners are allowed out of their cells to move about with a relative degree of freedom. This time can be used for playing games (i.e. cards, pool or table tennis), using the gym or shower, getting a haircut, making a phone call or chatting with one another on the wing, etc._

††_lag: prisoner, convict, or ex-convict_

_*†screw: prison officer or guard_

* * *

_Special thanks to hajimebassaidai for her Brit-picking skills._


	12. Confrontations, Part II

**November 2013**

"_Sherlock Holmes himself has so far refused to comment, but with a series of hoaxes such as these, it's almost impossible to know what the truth actually is. New Scotland Yard have confirmed that Sherlock Holmes is alive, and that they believe him to be innocent of all charges, and that they're looking forward to working with him again. Back to you in the studio."*_

John switched off the television and sat back on the sofa. His brain was in a whirl; he literally did not know what to think.

Sherlock was alive.

Sherlock was _alive_.

The Holmes brothers, with the help of Molly Hooper and a bunch of tramps, had put on a show for John in which he witnessed the suicide of his best friend. Said best friend then left on a grand adventure, tracking down and destroying the remnants of Moriarty's network, while Mycroft and Molly had watched John go to prison and said _nothing_.

John didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Or punch something. Even while Greg had been explaining it to him, John had had to keep asking him to repeat himself. He just couldn't get his head around it all.

He got up and began to pace.

All his life, when John had a lot to wrestle with emotionally, he liked to _move_. Going for a run, a bike ride or even a long walk always helped to clear his head and bring things into perspective. Unfortunately, he had not been out of Lestrade's bedsit in the five days since he had gone to confront Mycroft. That had been the same night Greg had told him about Sherlock's "resurrection," and John had walked the streets of London all through the night, ending up at the Diogenes Club the next morning.

The next day, news of Sherlock's miraculous return broke: "#sherlocklives," indeed.

Before the Fall, John had still been able to fade into the background, even during the height of Sherlock's popularity. Though far from unpleasant in appearance, his decidedly English looks, sensible and serviceable clothing, and short-side-of-average height did not cause him to stand out, particularly when paired with Sherlock's distinctive angular features, tallness, and dramatic style of dress. This had been fine with him.

This was no longer the case. Coupled with Sherlock's "suicide" two years ago, John's arrest, trial and conviction had made his face almost as well-known as Sherlock's – and now, thanks to the scar, he could no longer pretend that he _wasn't_ "that bloke from the papers/telly," that the resemblance was just a coincidence, after all. He'd found that out on his trip back from visiting Mycroft – just as, while out walking during the long night before, he'd learned that even if people _didn't _recognize him as John Watson, they still couldn't help noticing the scar. And staring.

To make matters worse, the media were now desperate to hunt him down. With the news of Sherlock's return came the inevitable, hungry speculation, "What does Wrongfully Convicted John Watson think of his former colleague's return?" (He had gone from being "Bachelor John Watson" to "Disgraced Ex-Solider John Watson" to "Wrongfully Convicted John Watson." He wondered if he would ever be able to go back to being just plain "John Watson.") "Did John Watson know about the subterfuge?" And "John Watson could not be reached for comment." And "Where is John Watson _now_?" Both Mrs. Hudson and Harry were being harassed by eager reporters, and Lestrade admitted reluctantly that there were a fair amount of the vultures looking out for John down at the Yard, too.

In many ways, he felt like he was still in prison.

A knock at the door halted his pacing. Before John could move or say anything, he heard a voice.

"Ooh-ooh!"

It was Mrs. Hudson.

John hesitated. He wasn't sure he was up for company. He loved Mrs. Hudson dearly, like his own mum, really, but…he didn't really want to talk to her about Sherlock. Not yet, anyway. Greg had told him that Sherlock was back at 221b and Mrs. Hudson was over the moon about it. John didn't blame her, but he also didn't want her to trying to force a reunion or reconciliation for which he was not ready. He knew Mrs. Hudson meant the best for him, but he had no doubt that her desire to have both of her "boys" home might override her sensitivity towards his own feelings, and–"

"John Watson, you open this door this minute!"

Unable to keep from grinning, John got up, went to the door, and opened it.

"_Finally_!" Mrs. Hudson huffed. She was holding a couple of plastic bags in one hand and in a holdall in the other. John hastened to take them both from her.

"The plastic bags go in the kitchen, please," the elderly landlady said briskly, starting toward the kitchen area. "The holdall has some clothes of yours from home that I thought you might need."

As John began helping Mrs. Hudson unpack the homemade stew, bread and other goodies, he reflected on how she insisted on continuing to refer to 221b as his "home." He also noticed that she only brought him a few things at a time, no doubt not wanting to empty out his old room to the point where it would look as though John had abandoned it entirely.

"Now then," Mrs. Hudson said brightly, "how about some tea?" She held up a package of chocolate biscuits.

* * *

Moments later, she was sitting in Greg's armchair while John sat on the sofa, both of them slowly sipping the hot tea. John was content to let the silence stretch out, but before long Mrs. Hudson set her cup down on the coffee table and sat forward a bit, looking earnestly at him.

"How are you, love?" she asked tenderly.

John automatically opened his mouth to lie, then stopped. It was no good, anyway.

"I'm angry," he said simply.

"It's okay, John. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm quite angry with him myself, you know." Her tone was gentle as she took John's cup from him, set it down on the table, and took his hands in both her own.

"Are you?" John couldn't help asking. "I thought you'd just be happy to have him back…"

She squeezed his hands, hard. "John. Of course I'm angry with him. He lied to us, and he left us behind without a word and it was awful for all of us, but especially for you. Truth to be told, I'm angrier with him on your behalf than I am on my own."

John looked surprised.

"Oh, you can believe it," Mrs. Hudson assured him. "I mean that. But John…being angry with someone isn't the same as hating that person."

John thinned his lips and looked away. Mrs. Hudson let that sink in for a moment.

"I'm not telling you to forgive him, John. That isn't for me to decide, and to be frank I'm not sure _I _could myself, had I been through...well, the things you've been through."

Her eyes lingered for a moment on his scar, and she looked sad.

"I won't lie to you, John. I miss you, and I want you to come home. I want _both_ my boys back." Here she smiled. "But I understand if you can't. And I understand that it might take some time for you to figure out just how you feel. I'm all bewildered myself – it's the first time I've had anyone come back from the dead, too, you know."

They chuckled a bit at that, then Mrs. Hudson grew sober as she looked into John's eyes.

"I will say this, though, love…as angry as I am, and for as much as we'll have to work though to get past it all…I _am_ happy. Having our Sherlock back…it's like a gift."

John sighed. "I understand that, Mrs. H. And I don't blame you." She raised her eyebrows and he laughed a little. "Well, not _much_, anyway. I'm not sure…I mean, I'm not sorry he's _alive_, exactly, but…" his voice trailed off, and he looked away with frustration.

Mrs. Hudson helped him. "But you're sorry he lied to you, and that he left you behind," she guessed.

John looked back at her.

"Yeah. I mean, I went to _prison_…" He closed his eyes and shook his head as memories threatened to overwhelm him. He blinked hard, then looked into her eyes again. "I'm not the man I was before…before he went away."

She stood up, then, and he stood with her. She drew him in for a hug.

"You're _John_. You'll always be our John."

* * *

John sat for a long time after Mrs. Hudson left, thinking. He was glad she had been more reasonable and sensitive to his feelings than he had expected, but he still didn't feel ready to see Sherlock.

Eventually, though, he knew he was going to need an explanation – and from the man's own mouth, not through someone else.

Sighing, he got up to dump out his cold tea and brew a fresh cup.

He had just reached for the cordless kettle when he was mildly surprised by the sound of the door being unlocked and opened.

"You're back early, Greg." John looked up from the kettle and started to turn, but the reflection he glimpsed in the shiny microwave door caught his eye and froze him in place: the person standing behind him was not Greg Lestrade. The facial features did not show in the reflection, but the silhouette was easy to recognize…a tall figure, thin, curly hair, popped coat collar...

John stared at that silhouette for an endless moment. He could see his own, closer reflection, could make out his own eyes, grown huge with shock, and the long, jagged scar stretching down the left side of his face. He felt like he was shaking, but his reflection was still as stone. Iron bands seemed to be constricting his heart painfully, causing his breath to stutter.

John squeezed his eyes shut. He braced his hands on the worktop and lowered his head.

_Maybe_, he thought, _if I stay still long enough, when I look up it will be gone_.

But then, the voice:

"John."

John involuntarily shrank together a little, as though he had been struck. That _voice_, Sherlock's distinctive, never-to-be-forgotten baritone that he sometimes heard in his dreams but never, ever believed he would hear again in reality…it was almost too much to be borne. It _was_ too much to be borne, and without realizing he was going to do so, John raised a placating hand and said in a tight, low voice, "Don't…just…_don't_."

But behind him, he heard Sherlock advance a step. John hunched in on himself, pulling in his shoulders, unconsciously trying to make himself smaller, less noticeable. Something in that movement seemed to warn Sherlock that he was nearing a line he did not truly wish to cross, and he stopped again.

"John…I waited, like Lestrade suggested. I waited for you to contact me. But you didn't." The voice sounded lost, almost...childlike. You didn't, and I wanted to explain…that is...I realize I probably owe you some sort of apology–"

"Leave."

"John, I didn't _know_. Mycroft didn't tell me you had been charged and convicted until I had returned and–"

Clenching his left fist, John slammed it down on the worktop, making his mug and the kettle jump. Sherlock went silent at once. The seconds ticked by tensely as John struggled to steady his breathing. Finally, eyes closed, still facing away from Sherlock, he managed to speak in a voice that trembled only slightly.

"You made me watch. You made me…_watch_. And then you let me think you were dead. For two. _Years_." John raised his face and blinked rapidly at the reflection in the microwave door. "You let me grieve–" His voice quavered; he swallowed once and then tried again. "You let me grieve for – _how_? _How_ could you do that?" He gripped the edge of the worktop to keep himself from falling. (He didn't add the words "to me," but they hung there in the air as though they had been said aloud.)

"Moriarty had to be stopped." Sherlock sounded defensive. John gave a bitter laugh.

"Oh, I know all about the reasoning behind it, Sherlock. Greg told me. You and your brother planned the whole bloody charade. Nice to know he helped you orchestrate all that while I was sitting on my arse in prison."

"That was never my–"

John went on as though he had not spoken, staring down at the worktop. "I even know why it was important you carry it out that way right then…guns to our heads, wasn't it? Me, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade? Horrific as that whole experience was, I suppose I ought to thank you for saving my life, though I think I may rather have been shot."

"John, I–"

"But that doesn't explain why you left and stayed gone and never let us, let _me_, know the truth…why you left us to grieve and mourn for you, and blame ourselves for the part we played in your so-called death. You told Molly. You let members of your Homeless Network in on the secret. But you didn't tell _me_, your friend, who worked by your side every day, who shared a _flat_ with you."

There was an awkward pause as he waited for Sherlock to respond to this, but the detective was silent. John finally raised his head and looked at the reflection in the door again. His voice was quiet when he spoke.

"One word, Sherlock. That is all I would have needed. One word to let me know that you were alive."

John lowered his head again, breathing heavily.

"Even that hellhole of a prison would have been easier to bear, had I known you were alive somewhere, and that by being there I was helping to keep you safe," he added in a whisper.

Sherlock said quietly, "I've nearly been in contact so many times, but..."

"But?"

"I worried that, you know, you might say something indiscreet."

John caught his breath. "What?" he managed.

Sherlock sounded diffident. "Well, you know…let the cat out of the bag?"

Feeling the blood drain from his face, John finally turned to face his old friend. He did not know what expression he wore on his scarred face, but whatever it was, it made Sherlock's eye widen, and the taller man took an involuntary, single step backwards.

Seeing him – whole and unbroken and animated and wonderfully, reassuringly _alive – _was both agonizing and joyous. It hurt to look at him, it _hurt_ in deep-down ways John had never known, but he _had_ to look at him, had to face him when he said what he needed to say.

"I've killed for you," John said hoarsely. "I've killed for you, and I offered – that night at the pool, with Moriarty – I offered to die for you. I was _prepared_ to die for you. I would have, you know, without hesitating."

He suddenly felt near tears, but he angrily forced them back, cleared his throat, and went on.

"So, then. Do you really mean to stand there and tell me – tell _me?_ – that you faked your death, made me _watch_, let me _grieve_ for you – in _prison_, mind you – for two years without a _bloody_ word because you thought…you thought I might betray you?"

Despite himself, John's voice broke a little over the last phrase.

Sherlock's eyes went wide at the word _betray_. "Don't be an idiot!" He cried, his voice sounding both impatient and desperate. "Of course I know you would never knowingly–"

"'_Knowingly_?'" John interrupted coldly.

"Yes, _knowingly_. You're not a good liar, John," Sherlock insisted fiercely.

There was a long pause as John stared at him. He found himself smiling a little, though there was nothing humorous about this situation at all.

"Yes," John agreed in a much quieter voice. "That's true, innit…I always did have trouble lying convincingly to the people I care about. Some people might think that a virtue, though of course Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes wouldn't."

He looked away for a moment, gathering himself. Then, turning back to Sherlock, he said in a much harder voice, "But if you believe for one _second_ that I wouldn't let myself be cut into pieces rather than endanger you by a word or a look, Sherlock…well, then, you never really knew me at all."

What little color remaining in Sherlock's face vanished and he looked stricken.

"John…my God, I never meant–"

But John had had enough. "Leave." He turned away again.

"John–"

"_Leave."_

"_No_. Not until–"

With an inarticulate cry, John swept up the cordless kettle in his right hand and, in one smooth, continuous motion, whirled about and threw it at Sherlock's head as hard as he could. Sherlock managed to duck just in time, and the kettle sailed through the doorway to the bedsit and smashed against the wall on the far side of the hall.

"Bloody hell!"

It was Lestrade. He came running through the door and skidded to a halt, staring with horrified eyes at John and Sherlock, both of whom were white and shaking.

John blinked, shook his head a little, and seemed to come back to himself. He looked at Greg, then at Sherlock, then past them both to the smashed kettle. He caught his breath and looked at Greg again.

"Jesus! I'm – Greg, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" His voice shook; he sounded close to panicking.

Lestrade's eyes widened in swift concern and he strode towards John in the kitchen area, hissing at the detective as he passed him, "Dammit, Sherlock, I _told_ you to wait!"

John was hunched over, eyes screwed shut, hands at his temples. The scar stood out like a magenta stripe on his pale face. His breathing had grown increasingly erratic, and Lestrade, taking hold of John's wrists and drawing his hands away from his head, began to speak in a low, soothing voice.

"It's all right, John lad. It's all right. You're all right."

Sherlock stood, staring, pale and wide-eyed, his expression as solemn and frightened and confused as a child's that sees its mother crying. Lestrade looked up quickly; he wanted to help him, but right now John needed his attention more.

"Sherlock, _go_ – just go. Go home; I'll come by later. Go _now_!"

Sherlock fled. Behind him, he could hear Lestrade repeating brokenly, "You're okay. _We're_ okay. We're gonna be okay."

* * *

_*Text transcribed from the news clip in John Watson's blog post titled, "The Empty Hearse."_


	13. Retreat

**Author's Note:** Whew! Sorry for the delayed update; I was rather occupied with the very worst illness of my adult life…bronchopneumonia. I strongly suggest it be avoided at all costs! Doing better now. Meanwhile, here's the latest chapter – sorry if it's a bit slow-moving, but it's an important transition.

* * *

**November 2013**

"Thanks for coming," Lestrade said, setting two fresh cups of coffee down on the two-person kitchen table and sinking into one of the chairs. Curling the fingers of his right hand around the steaming cup, he stared into it while he scrubbed his left hand through his short, silver hair. "I didn't know who else to call…Molly was my first thought, but then…" he trailed off.

Across from him, Mike Stamford removed his stethoscope, stowed it in his black medical bag, zipped the bag up, and set it on the floor before sitting back in his own chair and reaching for the second cup with a nod of thanks. "Definitely not the best person right now," he said agreeably, glancing back towards the living area.

Lestrade followed his gaze to where John lay sleeping on the sofa, his back to the dimmed room and a blanket pulled up to his shoulders. His breathing was deep and even.

"It's all right," Mike said reassuringly. "We can talk quietly…that was a pretty strong sedative I gave him. He should be out for awhile."

Lestrade sighed. "I didn't know what to do…he didn't want me to call anyone, kept insisting he was fine, but his color was bad and he kept shaking and he couldn't get his breath back–"

"Greg, it's fine," Mike insisted. "I was glad to come…there's not much I wouldn't do for John, but he hates asking for help."

"Tell me about it," Lestrade huffed, raising his eyes to heaven. Mike offered a smile of commiseration.

For a few moments the two men sat, sipping their coffee, in a slightly awkward silence. Lestrade liked Mike, but he didn't know him very well. He'd seen him occasionally at Bart's, but had known the doctor by sight only until John occasionally began to bring him along on pub nights, back before…well, before everything with Moriarty. Lestrade knew that Mike was happily married (no kids, two large dogs), that he taught at Bart's (where he had attended medical school with John), that he got on pretty well with Sherlock (or had once upon a time), and that he had actually introduced Sherlock to John when each separately told him he was in the market for a flatmate. Other than that, all he really knew was that Mike enjoyed a pint, was good at darts, followed football and seemed genuinely interested in the tales Greg and other Yarders had to share when they met up.

He also knew that, while Mike had not been on John's short list of approved visitors at Frankland, he had kept in touch with John during his incarceration through the post.

"How long have you known John, Mike?" Lestrade asked suddenly, surprising himself.

Mike, who had been staring thoughtfully into his cup, looked up. "We were sort of mates when we were students," he replied slowly. "I always liked him…hell, everybody liked John."j

Lestrade nodded. It was easy to like John Watson, he knew. "How did you happen to lose touch?" he asked.

Mike hesitated. "Well, it wasn't really a matter of losing touch, so to speak," he said carefully. "I meant it when I said everybody liked John, but…he didn't have many _real_ friends, if you understand me."

Lestrade frowned. "What do you mean?"

"It's a bit difficult to explain," Mike said. "That is…well, for a guy who seemed really warm and friendly, he mostly kept himself to himself. Think about it, Greg…what do you _really_ know about John Watson?"

Staring down at the tabletop, Lestrade thought it over. What did he know about John? Not much, he suddenly realized with a frown. He knew John was a doctor, had been a captain in the army, had been wounded in action and invalided out. But he didn't know the specifics, Lestrade suddenly realized. He had met John's elder sister at the trial, but no other family had shown up.

Lestrade looked up to see Mike nodding at him knowingly. "Not much, eh?"

"I may not know much about his early life, no, but I know the important things," Lestrade said firmly. "I know he's a hard worker, a brave and loyal friend, and very honest. I know he's a good man…a man of integrity."

Mike smiled faintly. "You don't have to convince me, Greg. I never believed those charges against him for one minute, nor would anyone who'd ever actually met John."

Lestrade looked down and cleared his throat. Mike continued.

"I can tell you a _bit_ more than that…not much, though. You know Harry's an alcoholic?"

Lestrade blew out a breath. "Yeah…yeah, John had said, a long time ago, and I recognized the signs."

Mike nodded grimly. "Well, she wasn't the only one in the family. His father drank, too, and though John never came right out and said it I gather he made a habit of knocking his wife and kids around. Harry left home early, then John had to live with her for a couple of years after their parents died…"

Greg winced. "Trust issues."

"Trust issues," Mike agreed. "You can see why he's got 'em. John was friendly, always, but he held his cards close and kept himself at a distance. He's not one to talk about himself."

The two men sipped their coffee in silence for a long moment.

"Mike," Greg said eventually. "That day…what made you decide to introduce John to Sherlock, of all people? You already knew how…ah, _difficult_ Sherlock is, for want of a better word."

Mike let out a long breath, thinking. Greg waited.

"I liked Sherlock," he said finally. (Greg smiled at this…good old, easygoing Mike, who saw the good in everyone.) "And I thought John could handle him."

When Greg raised his eyebrows at this, Mike smiled. "I did. John's laidback, but not a pushover. I knew from Bart's he had a good sense of humor and thrives on challenges. And patient, good Lord," here Mike snorted. "Anyone who could help me get through pathology should be able to put up with Sherlock's crazy experiments, I figured!"

Lestrade couldn't help laughing quietly with Mike at that. Then the doctor turned serious again, looking at Greg earnestly from behind his specs.

"Between us, though, Greg…there was something sort of…I dunno, sort of _desperate_ in John's face that day. He recognized me right away, I know he did, for all he pretended not to at first." Mike chewed his lip a second, thinking. "I just couldn't let him go. He looked so damned…_alone_."

Mike glanced over at the sofa, then back at Greg.

"And Sherlock seemed so alone, too. I know he's not like other people, but I thought for a long time he could use a friend, even if he didn't think so himself. Well, I was too slow and dull to be his friend." Mike chuckled ruefully.

"Aren't we all, mate?" Greg smiled in his turn.

Mike nodded. "But…call it a hunch, if you must, but I thought John might be different. And I hoped John, for his part, would at least find Sherlock a distraction. It all worked better than I'd hoped…until it didn't anymore." Mike's kind face fell.

"You mean until Sherlock took a walk off the roof of St. Bart's and John went to prison," Greg said quietly.

"Yeah," Mike said. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses briefly. "But I'll tell you something, Greg…I could never bring myself to truly regret introducing them, not really. Now and then I'd wish I hadn't, then I'd remember that look on John's face that day in the park, and…" He trailed off.

Lestrade waited, and when Mike didn't continue he prompted him. "And?"

Mike refocused his faraway gaze on Greg. "Let's just say…I'm not sure John would be with us today, if he hadn't met Sherlock." He hesitated, then added, "And a world without John…well, it would be a less _noble_ place, in my opinion."

Lestrade pondered that for awhile, staring at the tabletop. Finally, he looked up, determined.

"Mike, could you do me another big favor and stay here for a bit? I'd like to go see someone, and I don't want to leave John alone right now."

* * *

It was after midnight before Lestrade showed up at 221b.

Sherlock was in his accustomed leather seat, facing John's empty chair with his fingers steepled before his thoughtful face as of old. But as eerily familiar as the scene was, Lestrade _felt_ the difference – an unseen tension thrummed just under the surface of Sherlock's calm facade, and his pale skin had a grayish tinge to it.

Feeling an odd sense of déjà vu, Lestrade, after some hesitation, seated himself in John's chair and waited. Sherlock's pale eyes were shuttered, but after a few moments it was as though a shade went up behind them and he finally seemed to _see_ Lestrade.

The naked, wounded look in Sherlock's eyes left Lestrade feeling as though he faced a child. It occurred to him that this was not the first time he had felt that way about Sherlock.

"Where's John?" Sherlock's voice was small and uncertain.

"Sleeping," Lestrade replied. He didn't mention how long it had taken to get John through the panic attack, or that he'd had to call in reinforcements.

Sherlock looked away. "I don't understand. I _said_ I was sorry. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

His lost, bewildered air punctured Lestrade's bubble of righteous anger.

"Sherlock," Greg began – then stopped. Sighing, he dropped his face in his hands. "If only it were that simple."

"It _is_ simple, Lestrade," Sherlock said coldly, and suddenly the old, arrogant Sherlock was back. "It was Mycroft. Moriarty framed John along with me, and Mycroft didn't tell me. While I took my own 'fall' from the roof of Bart's, Mycroft let John take a metaphorical 'fall,' claiming it was to keep John safe. John is understandably bitter and blames us both."

Lestrade dropped his hands to his knees and sat back in John's chair. He searched out Sherlock's eyes with his own.

"Look…Sherlock. John's upset about that, yeah, understandably. But I think he's almost more upset that you underestimated him, and that's what kind of led to the whole thing happening."

Sherlock frowned. Lestrade could see by his expression that the detective was puzzled, but didn't want to admit to it.

"Sherlock," Lestrade tried to explain, gently. "Your faked suicide nearly killed him."

Sherlock blinked. "How–"

"I _mean_," Lestrade interrupted loudly, "It about broke his heart."

Sherlock stared at him. "I don't understand. Why would he be that upset?"

Now it was Lestrade's turn to stare. "Are you bloody serious?" He asked finally.

Sherlock's face turned sour. "Speak plainly, Lestrade, and for God's sake, dispense with the sentiment."

"A bit difficult to do, when talking about your friends," Lestrade said acidly. "You really don't 'get' how much we all care about you, do you – especially John? You think I was in it for the help on the cases, and John for the excitement, and Mrs. Hudson…hell, Mrs. Hudson because she was lonely, or something. You really thought it wouldn't hit us that hard if you died."

"And it was your fondness for me that caused you to take me on in the first place, Lestrade?" Sherlock asked with a sarcastic twist to his lips.

"Not at first, no," Lestrade admitted. "But over time–"

"As interesting as all this is, Lestrade, it hardly applies," Sherlock interrupted coldly, looking away. "I tried talking to John. He might his position quite clear."

"Because he's _hurt_."

"At least he's not _dead_," Sherlock shot back. "Mission accomplished, and there's an end to it. Now, I have other, more serious matters to occupy me, and seeing as John isn't in the picture anymore, if you wouldn't mind, I have work to do."

Lestrade sighed. He could see the half-hidden hurt and confusion behind Sherlock's eyes and decided to let it go for now. Standing up, he said, "Listen…I have a case tomorrow you might be interested in. Why don't you come on out, get your feet wet again?"

Sherlock looked up at him, surprised and (Lestrade could have sworn) almost touched.

"I have a case I'm working on for my _dear_ brother" he almost spat the last two words, "but I imagine I can find time to assist you. Except–"

He broke off suddenly and looked away.

Lestrade understood. "Except it won't be the same without John. I know. But maybe it's only temporary."

"I _need_ an assistant," Sherlock mumbled without looking up.

"You need _John_…but he needs time. So, for now, why don't you ask Molly?" Lestrade suggested. "You owe her after all she did for you…that couldn't have been an easy burden for her to carry."

Shrugging into his jacket, Lestrade headed for the door without giving Sherlock time to respond. "I'll text you tomorrow," he called over his shoulder.

Sherlock didn't answer. He appeared to have returned to his Mind Palace.

* * *

John was about ready to pull the hair right out of his head…or kick the walls of Lestrade's tiny bedsit in.

It had been five days since Sherlock had "dropped in," and only once since then had John been out of the bedsit. He had Greg had risked a late night trip to an all-night café two streets over the day after Sherlock's visit, John using a hat and scarf to keep as much of his face covered as he could. It didn't work…an eager young tabloid reporter (she reminded John unpleasantly of Kitty Reilly) had been tailing Lestrade, guessing from photos taken during John's trial that the detective inspector might have ties with the elusive John Watson that had been heretofore unexplored.

They managed to get back to the bedsit without being followed, but now Greg was being tailed at Scotland Yard, and John knew it was only a matter of time. Greg broached the possibility of John making a statement, but John wouldn't hear of it…he wanted nothing to do with those vultures.

Besides…he didn't know what he would say.

So now John was practically climbing the walls. His face, along with Sherlock's, was all over the papers and the TV, Mrs. Hudson couldn't even visit the shops without reporters approaching her, Lestrade was being dogged at the Yard, and Harry was getting intrusive calls at home and at work. John was both afraid to go out and half mad with staying in. And, as relieved as he was to be out of prison, he was disgusted to find himself…well, almost _missing_ the place. There, danger lurked every time he left his pad (except when he was working with Bell), and while actually _in_ his pad he'd suffered from a constant, fluctuating level of anxiety brought on by the mind-numbing boredom and suffocating sense of confinement. But at least he had known what to _expect_ on a day-to-day basis. And he had forged new, distressing habits over the past two years under the rigid routine…he could barely touch anything without reflexively looking to Lestrade for permission first, a situation that embarrassed them both. Lestrade tried to be reassuring ("these things take time, John"), but John felt as though, in his mind, at least, he was still imprisoned.

Huffing out a breath, John flopped down on the sofa and pulled out his phone. He opened the contacts list, which was distressingly short. Skimming over Mrs. Hudson's and Lestrade's names, he paused at the one just before Mike's and, after a moment of hesitation, selected it.

Three rings later, a connection was made.

"Watson…John. I was wondering when you'd be in touch. Welcome back to the world."

John sighed with relief and smiled a little. "Sir."

"You can call me James now, John. I'm not your CO anymore."

"Thank you, sir…_James_." The _sir_ had slipped off his tongue automatically, and both men laughed a little.

"How does it feel to be exonerated?" Major James Sholto asked.

"I don't exactly feel like a free man," John admitted. He paused, then asked, "Have you seen the latest?" By "the latest," he meant Sherlock's return.

"I have," Sholto said simply.

For a moment both men were silent. It was a comfortable silence, and this was, at the root of it, why John had called. In addition to their shared history (and John's enormous respect and admiration for the man), Sholto shared firsthand knowledge of the things John had gone through as no one else had…like John, he, too, had witnessed the deaths of good friends first hand, and he alone among John's friends knew what it was to be hounded by the media. In temperament, James Sholto was even more reticent than John, and John appreciated that the man seemed to know about him without John having to actually speak of certain things. It was one of the things John had appreciated about Sherlock.

"So, John," Sholto said now. "You and I have both lost more than our fair share of friends in violent ways over the years…this is the first I've heard of one coming back."

John laughed shortly. "Yeah."

"You don't sound particularly happy about it."

John blew out his breath, trying to collect his thoughts. On the other end of the line, Sholto was silent, patient. That was one way the antisocial man was quite different from Sherlock, John remembered – he would wait while you gathered your thoughts.

"He didn't know about me winding up in the nick," John said finally. "His sodding brother didn't pass along that tidbit of information, apparently. But he lied to me all the same, and for the worst reason…because he didn't trust me."

Saying it out loud made something twist painfully in John's chest. Again he heard Sherlock's voice in his mind _("I was worried that, you know, you might say something indiscreet"_) and the words stung just as much as when John had first heard him utter them.

"I don't know if I can forgive him for that," John said aloud.

"A man needs to be able to trust his comrade," Sholto agreed. "And to know he's trusted in return."

"And on top of everything else there's the bloody papers…well, I don't have to tell you what that's like. I can't stir a step outdoors, James," John said bitterly.

"Maybe you should get out of London for awhile, John."

"Where would I go?" John retorted.

It was a rhetorical question – he really didn't expect an answer. But Sholto gave him one, anyway.

"You could come here."

* * *

She might not be able to run any races with the state of her hip, but her hearing was as sharp as ever. At what sounded like a key in the front door lock, Mrs. Hudson turned the television off with a puzzled frown. Sherlock had called that he wouldn't be in for tea when he had gone out a couple of hours ago, and Greg usually called before dropping by. But the metallic rattle was followed quickly by the scrape of the door opening.

Moving quickly to the door of 221a, Mrs. Hudson cautiously peered out into the hallway. Her heart stilled for a moment when she beheld an unfamiliar figure of somewhat shorter than average height, skinny, wearing faded jeans, scuffed boots, an old blue jacket and a battered black sweatshirt with the hood drawn up. Despite the mildness of the evening, a dark gray scarf further obscured the person's head and face.

Before she could demand that the figure identify itself, it spoke: "It's me, Mrs. H."

She could not help gasping in pleased surprise when John reached up, unwound the scarf and drew back the hood, revealing tousled silver-and-gold hair and the ugly scar that disfigured his otherwise charming face (and broke her heart a little every time she beheld it).

"John! You're _home_!" Mrs. Hudson cried delightedly. She hurried forward and embraced him. "Oh, John, you should have rung – I would have had tea ready for you!" She leaned back, looking into his face, then said again, "Oh, John…I'm just so _happy_!" She leaned into him again and gave him a tight squeeze.

He squeezed her back, then held her away from him for a moment. He looked anxious, awkward. "Look…Mrs. Hudson…"

"I'm afraid Sherlock's not here at the moment, John, but he's going to be _so_ happy," Mrs. Hudson bubbled on. "He wouldn't say so, but he hates not having you here, he's been moping about dreadfully–"

"I know he's not here," John interrupted. "That's why I…Greg said he was going with him tonight to see about a skeleton that was found….anyway, I borrowed Greg's key to 221 so I could–"

She interrupted him in her turn. "Don't you worry, I have your key waiting for you. I could have had it back to you before, but–"

John raised his voice. "Mrs. Hudson, I'm not staying!"

She stared at him, stricken. His dark blue eyes were large and solemn as he looked at her, and he swallowed nervously, shifting his gaze to the left. "I-I just came to get some things, and to…well, to tell you goodbye."

"Goodbye?" Mrs. Hudson echoed faintly. "But why…where…" She trailed off. She was gripping both his forearms tightly.

John lowered his eyes a moment, then raised them again. "I'm going to stay with a friend in Yorkshire for awhile," he said quietly. "I'm heading to the train station directly from here…I figured, you know, while Sher–…that is, while _he_ was out, I'd…well, that it would be a good time. To come by, I mean." He looked away awkwardly.

Mrs. Hudson closed her eyes a moment. Her hands slid down from his arms to grasp his hands in hers. She opened her eyes and looked at him sadly. "Oh, John. Just when I got both of you back. Do you _have_ to go?"

"I really do." He looked at her earnestly, and she could have wept to see the look on his face…hurt and scarred and somehow very young, despite the new gray strands in his fair hair. "It's just…Greg's place is so small; we're right on top of each other there…it's not fair to him. And I can't take a step outdoors without the press swarming all over me, not without bundling up like this, anyway."

"You could–"

"No, Mrs. Hudson, I really couldn't," John interrupted. "I can't…not now, not yet."

He didn't add, _maybe not ever_, but she could see it in his eyes, and she didn't press it for fear he would say it out loud and make it real. So instead she pressed her lips into a tight line and nodded.

John nodded back, relieved. "I just…I just need some time, some space." He paused. "Do you understand?"

"Yes. I do," Mrs. Hudson sighed. "I hate it, but I do understand." She'd been through something similar when her husband was on trial back in Florida. "You'll call me when you get there, and promise to stay in touch?"

John squeezed her hands gratefully, then let go. "Promise. And you can call me, too, now, you know, whenever you like…it's not like before."

He smiled, and she tried to smile back. She saw his eyes drift toward the stairs.

"Do you need help?"

"No," John replied quickly. "I'd rather…I can do it myself. It won't take long."

She nodded. "All right then. I'll wait for you down here."

She watched as he took a deep breath, then strode purposefully upstairs. She noticed that he bypassed the first storey altogether, not even glancing in the direction of the sitting room, proceeding directly to the second storey where his own bedroom was. She heard the door open and close, and wondered how it must be for him to be back in his old room after two and a half years, looking exactly as he had left it. It hadn't even gathered any dust – she had seen to that.

With a heavy sigh, Mrs. Hudson returned to 221a and headed directly to the kitchen. She found a small box and quickly began to pack it with teabags, biscuits, some cold leftover chicken, a couple of packets of crisps, and a small cake she had made for Sherlock. By the time she was finished, she heard John clattering down the stairs.

Stepping back out into the hallway with the box, Mrs. Hudson saw him descending the last few stairs, a large Army duffel bag over one shoulder. He was pale and looked somehow…_pursued_. Anxiety practically radiated off him.

"Here, open your bag," she said quickly. "I put together some things for you."

Grinning, John set the bag down and unzipped it, giving her a brief glimpse of clothing, a few books and his laptop. She tucked the box inside and he laughed breathlessly as he zipped the bag up again.

"I never having to worry about starving when you're around, Mrs. H!" he said, smiling. Then the smile faded and he looked at her seriously. "You always try to look after me."

Tears filled her eyes as she reached for him. "And I always will." Her mouth trembled. "Come home soon, John."

He kissed her cheek, gave her a wordless squeeze, then, scooping up the bag, headed for the front door. She moved sadly back to her own flat.

"John!" she called from her doorway.

He paused in the act of drawing up his hood, and looked back at her expectantly.

"We love you," Mrs. Hudson said, firmly and meaningfully. "We _all_ love you."

He offered her a small, sad smile as he wound his scarf around his face again, slung the duffel bag over his shoulder, and headed out into the damp night without a backward glance.

Mrs. Hudson could not bear to watch him go from the window, and John was too preoccupied, so neither noticed the figure across the street, half-hidden in the shadows, watching him intently as he strode away.

* * *

_Special thanks to hajimebassaidai for her Brit-picking skills._


End file.
